and surprise. Then noting the wily expression of the supple Greek, he
added, "Oh! I see, by becoming a spy upon their practices and a betrayer
of their secrets. Is that it?"

"We Greeks like not the words traitor and spy," said the youth, with a
faint blush, "but to serve the Emperor and your Excellency we would bear
even that opprobrium."

"Well, you look capable of it," said the Prefect, with an undisguised
sneer, "and I will gladly use any instruments to crush this vile sect."

"But, your Excellency," said the cringing Greek, swallowing his chagrin
and annoyance, "I shall require gold to gain the confidence of these
Christians--not to bribe them, for that is impossible, but to spend in
what they call charity--to give to their sick and poor."

"Not forgetting yourself, I'll be bound," sneered the Prefect. "But what
you say is no doubt true;" and turning to the table he wrote an order
upon the Imperial Exchequer, and handed it to the Greek, with the words,
"If you make good use of that, there is more where it comes from. The
Emperor pays his _faithful_ servants well." Then dismissing the
treacherous tool whom he himself despised, he passed into the Basilica,
or court, where the bold Christian youth who had torn down the Emperor's
edict was to receive his sentence.

Livid with the torture he had undergone to make him disclose the names
of his accomplices--tortures which he had borne with heroic fortitude
he boldly avowed his act, and defied the power of the Prefect to extort
the name of a single Christian from his lips. We will not harrow the
hearts of our readers by recounting the atrocious tortures by which the
body of the brave youth had been wrung. He was at length borne away
fainting to his cruel fate. Although the Prefect, who had sworn to have
his secret if he tore the heart out of his body, gnashed his teeth in
impotent rage at the defiance of the mangled martyr, yet he could not in
his inmost soul help feeling the vast gulf between his sublime fidelity
and the heinous guilt of the base traitor from whom he had just parted.

The pages of the contemporary historians, Eusebius and Lactantius, give
too minute and circumstantial accounts of the persecutions, of which
they were eye-witnesses, to allow us to adopt the complacent theory of
Gibbon, that the sufferings of the Christians were comparatively few
and insignificant. "We ourselves have seen," says the Bishop of C[ae]sarea,
"crowds of persons, some behea