the other; "yes, and his farm too. He has rambled
round Sicca, many is the mile. And he knows the short cuts, and the blind
ways, and safe circuits."

"What's the boy's name?" asked Jucundus.

"Firmian," answered Arnobius. "Firmian Lactantius."

"I say, Firmian," said Jucundus to him, "where are you to be found of a
day, my boy?"

"At class morning and afternoon," answered Firmian, "sleeping in the
porticoes in midday, nowhere in the evening, and roosting with Arnobius at
night."

"And you can keep a secret, should it so happen?" asked Jucundus, "and do
an errand, if I gave you one?"

"I'll give him the stick worse than Rupilius, if he does not," said
Arnobius.

"A bargain," cried Jucundus; and, waving his hand to them, he stept
through the city gate, and they returned to their afternoon amusements.

CHAPTER IX.

JUCUNDUS BAITS HIS TRAP.

Agellius is busily employed upon his farm. While the enemies of his faith
are laying their toils for him and his brethren in the imperial city, in
the proconsular _officium_, and in the municipal curia,--while Jucundus is
scheming against him personally in another way and with other
intentions,--the unconscious object of these machinations is busy about his
master's crops, housing the corn in caves or pits, distilling the roses,
irrigating the _khennah_, and training and sheltering the vines. And he
does so, not only from a sense of duty, but the more assiduously, because
he finds in constant employment a protection against himself, against idle
thoughts, wayward wishes, discontent, and despondency. It is doubtless
very strange to the reader how any one who professed himself a Christian
in good earnest should be open to the imputation of resting his hopes and
his heart in the tents of paganism; but we do not see why Agellius has not
quite as much right to be inconsistent in one way as Christians of the
present time in another, and perhaps he has more to say for himself than
they. They have not had the trial of solitude, nor the consequent
temptation to which he has been exposed, of seeking relief from his own
thoughts in the company of unbelievers. When a boy he had received his
education at that school in the Temple of Mercury of which we heard in the
foregoing chapter; and though happily he had preserved himself from the
contagion of idolatry and sin, he had on that very account formed no
friendships with