ll silent.

'Bring in then,' cried the Prefect, 'your pincers, rakes and shells; and
we will see what they may have virtue to bring forth.'

The black messengers of death hastened at the word from their dark
recesses, loaded with those new instruments of torture, and stood around
the miserable man.

'Now, Macer,' said Varus once more, 'acknowledge Jupiter Greatest and
Best, and thou shalt live.'

Macer turned round to the people, and with his utmost voice cried out,

'There is, O Romans, but One God; and the God of Christ is he--'

No sooner had he uttered those words than Fronto exclaimed,

'Ah! hah! I have found thee then! This is the voice, thrice accursed!
that came from the sacred Temple of the Sun! This, Romans, is the god
whose thunder turned you pale.'

'Had it been my voice alone, priest, that was heard that day, I had been
accursed indeed. I was out the humble instrument of him I serve--driven
by his spirit. It was the voice of God, not of man.'

'These,' said Fronto, 'are the Christian devices, by which they would
lead blindfold into their snares you, Romans, and your children. May
Christ ever employ in Rome a messenger cunning and skilful as this
prating god, and Hellenism will have naught to fear.'

'And,' cried Macer, 'let your priests be but like Fronto, and the eyes
of the blindest driveler of you all will be unsealed. Ask Fronto into
whose bag went the bull's heart, that on the day of dedication could not
be found--

'Thou liest, Nazarene--'

'Ply him with your pincers,' cried Varus,--and the cruel irons were
plunged into his flesh. Yet he shrunk not--nor groaned; but his voice
was again heard in the midst of the torture,

'Ask him from whose robe came the old and withered heart, the sight of
which so unmanned Aurelian--'

'Dash in his mouth,' shrieked Fronto, 'and stop those lies blacker than
hell.'

But Macer went on, while the irons tore him in every part.

'Ask him too for the instructions and the bribes given to the
haruspices, and to those who led the beasts up to the altar. Though I
die, Romans, I have left the proof of all this in good hands. I stood
the while where I saw it all.'

'Thou liest, slave,' cried the furious priest; and at the same moment
springing forward and seizing an instrument from the hands of one of
the tormentors, he struck it into the shoulder of Macer, and the
lacerated arm fell from the bleeding trunk. A piercing shriek confessed
the inflicted agony.