“The wine in the tankard there I drained; but here’s bread and cheese—eat! How does that compare with the bread and cheese of your Lebanon herds?”
The lad ate ravenously. The guard went inside the hut and brought out fresh wine.
“The cheese is not so white as our goat curds; but the bread is like pearls after Rome’s slave fare.”
The old Idumean pricked up his ears. “Slave fare!” Then the boy had been held by some one in Rome. The guard’s caution redoubled, to which he added courtesy.
The spring frogs piped from the marshes. Last snatches of bird notes came from the oleander and acacia groves in front of the villas on the far side of the canal. A cooling breeze came down from the hills where the festive bonfires now winked a flamy eye. Only a few barges glided down the waters of the canal. The traffic of the paved road had quieted to an occasional soldier-tread echoing iron on the stones, or the barefoot patter of a hurrying furtive slave, or the loud laughter of lewd women, and louder disputes of the bargemen in the lodging houses.
“What brought you here?” quietly asked the guard.
“To see the sights of Rome—”
“And I’ll warrant you’ve seen enough of them. Have you seen the gladiators?”
“Their blood sickened me,” answered the lad. “The narrow streets choked me. I could not breathe their yellow air after our Lebanon sunshine. These marshes send up a yellow stench; and the lodging houses stank; and your freedmen loafers are night demons! I’d give all Rome for one night back in Daphne’s Gardens at Antioch, or down by the sea at Cæsarea. Your iron-shod hoofs keep me from sleep. I’d give all Nero’s Empire to hear the padded tread of our camels over the turfs where the caravans of Damascus and Chaldea meet!”
The Idumean pondered that. He must, then, be the son of some Damascus or Grecian merchant in Asia. Good money and plenty of it in those iron chests!