sign of acquiescence, cried out, many of them, 'See, he will sacrifice!'

Varus too said, 'It needs not that the outward sign be made. We will
dispense with it. The inward consent, Probus, shall suffice.
Soldiers!--'

'Hold, hold, Varus!' cried Probus, rousing himself from a momentary
forgetfulness. 'Think not, O Prefect, so meanly of me! What have I said
or done to induce such belief? I was but oppressed for a moment with
grief and shame that I should be chosen out from among all the
Christians in Rome as one whom soft words and bribes and the hope of
life could seduce from Christ. Cease, Varus, then; these words are
vain. Such as I have been, I am, and shall be to the end--a Christian!'

'To the rack with the Christian then!' shouted many voices from the
crowd.

Varus enforced silence.

'Probus,' said he, as order was restored, 'I shall still hope the best
for thee. Thou art of different stuff from him whom we first had before
us, and leisure for reflection may bring thee to another mind. I shall
not therefore condemn thee either to the rack or to death. Soldiers,
bear him to the prisons at the Fabrician bridge.'

Whereupon he was led from the tribunal, and conducted by a guard to the
place of his confinement.

* * * * *

The fate of Probus we now regard as sealed. In what manner he will
finally be disposed of it is vain to conjecture, so various are the
ways, each one more ingenious in cruelty than another, in which
Christians are made to suffer and die. Standing as he does, as virtually
the head of the Christian community, we can anticipate for him a death
only of more refined barbarity.

Felix too, we learn, is confined in the same prison: and with him all
the other principal Christians of Rome.

* * * * *

We have visited Probus in his confinement. You do not remember, Fausta,
probably you never saw, the prison at the Fabrician bridge. It seems a
city itself, so vast is it, and of so many parts, running upwards in
walls and towers to a dizzy height, and downwards to unknown depths,
where it spreads out in dungeons never visited by the light of day. In
this prison, now crowded with the Christians, did we seek our friend. We
were at once, upon making known our want, shown to the cell in which he
was confined.

We found him, as we entered, seated and bending over a volume which he
was reading, aided by the faint light afforded by a lamp whic