dren accompanied the praetor to
the door. Only Ben Jamin was absent; he was sitting with his companions
in his father's dining-room, and rewarding them for the assistance they
had given him with right good wine. Gamaliel heard them shouting and
singing, and pointing to the room he shrugged his shoulders, saying, as
he turned to his host:

"They are returning thanks to the God of our fathers in the Alexandrian
fashion."

And peace was broken no more in the Jew's house but by the firm tramp of
lictors and soldiers who kept watch over it, under arms.

In a side street the praetor met the tailor he had knocked down, the
sausage-maker, and other ringleaders of the attack on the Israelite's
house. They were being led away prisoners before the night magistrates.
Verus would have set them at liberty with all his heart, but he knew
that the Emperor would enquire next morning what had been done to the
rioters, and so he forbore. At any other time he would certainly have
sent them home unpunished, but just now he was dominated by a wish that
was more dominant than his good nature or his facile impulses.

CHAPTER VII.

When he reached the Caesareum the high-chamberlain was waiting to
conduct him to Sabina who desired to speak with him notwithstanding
the lateness of the hour, and when Verus entered the presence of
his patroness, he found her in the greatest excitement. She was not
reclining as usual on her pillows but was pacing her room with strides
of very unfeminine length.

"It is well that you have come!" she exclaimed to the praetor. "Lentulus
insists that he has seen Mastor the slave, and Balbilla declares--but it
is impossible!"

"You think that Caesar is here?" asked Verus.

"Did they tell you so too?"

"No. I do not linger to talk when you require my presence and there
is something important to be told just now then--but you must not be
alarmed."

"No useless speeches!"

"Just now I met, in his own person--"

"Who?"

"Hadrian."

"You are not mistaken, you are sure you saw him?"

"With these eyes."

"Abominable, unworthy, disgraceful!" cried Sabina, so loudly and
violently that she was startled at the shrill tones of her own voice.
Her tall thin figure quivered with excitement, and to any one else she
would have appeared in the highest degree graceless, unwomanly, and
repulsive: but Verus had been accustomed from his childhood to see her
with kinder eyes than other men, and it grieved him.

T