ument which exonerated Polybius and his son from all
criminality, and protected their person and property against soldiers and
town guards alike. This safe-conduct secured a peaceful future to the
genial old man, and filled the measure of what he owed to the freedman,
even to overflowing. Andreas, on his part, felt that his former owner's
kiss and brotherly greeting had sealed his acceptance as a free man. He
asked no greater reward than this he had just received; and there was
another thing which made his heart leap with gladness. He knew now that
the fullness of time had come in the best sense for the daughter of the
only woman he had ever loved, and that the Good Shepherd had called her
to be one of His flock. He could rejoice over this without a pang, for he
had learned that Diodoros, too, had entered on the path which hitherto he
had pointed out to him in vain.

A calm cheerfulness, which surprised all who knew him, brightened the
grave man; for him the essence of Christian love lay in the Resurrection,
and he saw with astonishment that a wonderful new vitality was rising out
of death. For Alexandria, too, the time was fulfilled. Men and women
crowded to the rite of baptism. Mothers brought their daughters, and
fathers their sons. These days of horror had multiplied the little
Christian congregation to a church of ten thousand members. Caracalla
turned hundreds from heathenism by his bloody sacrifices, his love of
fighting, his passion for revenge, and the blindness which made him cast
away all care for his eternal soul to secure the enjoyment of a brief
existence. That the sword which had slain thousands of their sons should
have been dedicated to Serapis, and accepted by the god, alienated many
of the citizens from the patron divinity of the town. Then the news that
Timotheus the high-priest had abdicated his office soon after Caesar's
departure, and, with his revered wife Euryale, had been baptized by their
friend the learned Clemens, confirmed many in their desire to be admitted
into the Christian community.

After these horrors of bloodshed, these orgies of hatred and vengeance,
every heart longed for love and peace and brotherly communion. Who of all
those that had looked death in the face in these days was not anxious to
know more of the creed which taught that the life beyond the grave was of
greater importance than that on earth?--while those who already held it
went forth to meet, as it were, a bridegroom