racious
impulses of his childhood had in some measure faded away, though he still
retained his faith in its first keenness and vigour. But he had no one to
keep him up to his duty; no exhortations, no example, no sympathy. His
father's friends had taken him up so far as this, that by an extraordinary
favour they had got him a lease for some years of the property which
Strabo, a veteran soldier, had held of the imperial government. The care
of this small property fell upon him, and another and more serious charge
was added to it. The long prosperity of the province had increased the
opulence and enlarged the upper class of Sicca. Officials, contractors,
and servants of the government had made fortunes, and raised villas in the
neighbourhood of the city. Natives of the place, returning from Rome, or
from provincial service elsewhere, had invested their gains in long leases
of state lands, or of the farms belonging to the imperial _res privata_ or
privy purse, and had become virtual proprietors of the rich fields or
beautiful gardens in which they had played as children. One of such
persons, who had had a place in the _officium_ of the quaestor, or rather
procurator, as he began to be called, was the employer of Agellius. His
property adjoined the cottage of the latter; and, having first employed
the youth from recollection of his father, he confided to him the place of
under-bailiff from the talents he showed for farm-business.

Such was his position at the early age of twenty-two; but honourable as it
was in itself, and from the mode in which it was obtained, no one would
consider it adapted, under the circumstances, to counteract the religious
languor and coldness which had grown upon him. And in truth he did not
know where he stood further than that he was firm in faith, as we have
said, and had shrunk from a boy upwards, from the vice and immorality
which was the very atmosphere of Sicca. He might any day be betrayed into
some fatal inconsistency, which would either lead him into sin, or oblige
him abruptly to retrace his steps, and find a truer and safer position. He
was not generally known to be a Christian, at least for certain, though he
was seen to keep clear of the established religion. It was not that he
hid, so much as that the world did not care to know, what he believed. In
that day there were many rites and worships which kept to themselves--many
forms of moroseness or misanthropy, as they were considered, wh