harm, but, if a Christian must be found and held up _in
terrorem_, he would rather it was a person like her, without connections
and home, than the member of any decent family of Sicca, whose fair fame
would be compromised by a catastrophe. However, she was _not_ a Christian,
and Agellius _was_, at least by profession; and his fear was lest Juba
should be right in his estimate of his brother's character. Juba had said
that Agellius could be as obstinate as he was ordinarily indolent and
yielding, and Jucundus dreaded lest, if he were rudely charged with
Christianity, and bidden to renounce it under pain of punishment, he would
rebel against the tyrannical order, and go to prison and to death out of
sheer perverseness or sense of honour.

With these perplexities before him, he could find nothing better than the
following plan of action, which had been in his mind for some time. While
the edict remained inoperative, he would do nothing at all, and let
Agellius go on with his country occupations, which would keep him out of
the way. But if any disposition appeared of a popular commotion, or a
movement on the part of the magistracy, he determined to get possession of
Agellius, and forcibly confine him in his own house in Sicca. He hoped
that in the case of one so young, so uncommitted, he should have influence
with the municipal authorities, or at the praetorium, or in the camp (for
the camp and the praetorium were under different jurisdictions in the
proconsulate), to shelter Agellius from a public inquiry into his
religious tenets, or if this could not be, to smuggle him out of the city.
He was ready to affirm solemnly that his nephew was no Christian, though
he was touched in the head, and, from an affection parallel to
hydrophobia, to which the disciples of Galen ought to turn their
attention, was sent into convulsions on the sight of an altar. His father,
indeed, was a malignant old atheist--there was no harm in being angry with
the dead--but it was very hard the son should suffer for his father's
offence. If he must be judged of by his parents, let him rather have the
advantage of the thorough loyalty and religiousness of his mother, a most
zealous old lady, in high repute in the neighbourhood of Sicca for her
theurgic knowledge, a staunch friend of the imperial government, which had
before now been indebted to her for important information, and as staunch
a hater of the Christians. Such was the plan of proceedings reso