igh to give him prospect of remuneration in the metropolis, had
opened his statue-shop in Sicca. Those modern arts which enable an English
town in this day to be so fertile in the production of ware of this
description for the markets of the pagan East, were then unknown; and
Jucundus depended on certain artists whom he imported, especially on two
Greeks, brother and sister, who came from some isle on the Asian coast,
for the supply of his trade. He was a good-natured man, self-indulgent,
positive, and warmly attached to the reigning paganism, both as being the
law of the land and the vital principle of the state; and, while he was
really kind to his orphan nephews, he simply abominated, as in duty bound,
the idiotic cant and impudent fee-fa-fum, to which, in his infallible
judgment, poor old Strabo had betrayed his children. He would have
restored them, you may be quite sure, to their country and to their
country's gods, had they acquiesced in the restoration: but in different
ways these little chaps, and he shook his head as he said it, were
difficult to deal with. Agellius had a very positive opinion of his own on
the matter; and as for Juba, though he had no opinion at all, yet he had
an equally positive aversion to have thrust on him by another any opinion
at all, even in favour of paganism. He had remained in his catechumen
state since he grew up, because he found himself in it; and though nothing
would make him go forward in his profession of Christianity, no earthly
power would be able to make him go back. So there he was, like a mule,
struck fast in the door of the Church, and feeling a gratification in his
independence of mind. However, whatever his profession might be, still, as
time went on, he plainly took after his step-mother, renewed his
intercourse with her after his father's death, and at length went so far
as to avow that he believed in nothing but the devil, if even he believed
in him. It was scarcely safe, however, to affirm that the senses of this
hopeful lad were his own.

Agellius, on the other hand, when a boy of six years old, had insisted on
receiving baptism; had perplexed his father by a manifestation of zeal to
which the old man was a stranger; and had made the good bishop lose the
corn-fleet which was starting for Italy from his importunity to learn the
Catechism. Baptized he was, confirmed, communicated; but a boy's nature is
variable, and by the time Agellius had reached adolescence, the g