An Egyptian seller of purple landed at Ptolemais from Alexandria. The name of the city of hope attracted Marsyas and he met the merchant at the wharves. But the seller of purple had been to Rome and the topmost name on his list of debtors was Herod Agrippa. At the end of three days, Marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his search. His invariable failures began to teach him a certain shrewdness. He discovered early that Essenic frankness would not serve his ends. He found that men were approachable through certain channels; that it was better to speak advisedly than frankly; to lay plans, rather than to wait on events; to use devices rather than persuasion. These things admitted, he discovered that he had unconsciously subordinated them to his use. Though momentarily alarmed, he did not hate himself as he should. On the other hand, it was pleasurable to lay siege to men and try them at their own scheming. At night in a dutiful effort to cleanse himself of the day's accumulation of worldliness, he went to the open proseuchae, where in the dark of the great out-of-doors, he was least likely to be noticed, to comfort himself with stolen worship, stolen profit from the Law. But the Law was not tender to those who lived as Stephen lived, and died as Stephen died. Not in all that great and holy scroll which the Reader read was there compassion for the blasphemer. Also, he heard of the great plague of persecution which Saul had loosed upon the Nazarenes in Jerusalem and how the Pharisee had become a mighty man before the Council, and an awe and a terror to the congregation. So he came away from the proseuchae, not only unhelped but harmed, embittered, enraged, alienated from his faith, and hungering for vengeance. By day, he walked through the commercial districts of Ptolemais and pushed his almost hopeless search with an energy that did not flag at continued failure. He knew that if he obtained the twenty thousand drachmae, he bound Agrippa the surer to his oath of allegiance to the cause against Saul. Despair, therefore, was a banished and forbidden thing. His plans, however, had been tried and proved fruitless. Typically a soldier of fortune, he was relying upon the exigencies of chance. Ptolemais was a normal town, with large interest and pleasures, and the fair day was too fleeting for one to stop and take heed of another. Passers pushed and hurried him when he came upon those more busy than he. Sailors, bronzed as Tatars, were probably the sole loiterers besides the inevitable oriental feature, the sidewalk mendicant. So it was that on a certain day when Marsyas overtook a lectica in the street, the old man within complained aloud and had no audience, except his plodding bearers, or the attention of a glance, or a slackened step now and again among the citizens. "They rob me!" he was crying when Marsyas came up with him.