Thinking the Master wished to eat reclining, after the manner of the Judeans, the boy lifted the couch and placed it at the table.
“Join me,” gently urged the Prophet. “I remember when I was a lad in Tarsus before I went down to study law in Jerusalem, we used to say of the mountain men, when they had broken bread and salt with us, they would be our friends forever, and never utter word, or think thought against host or guest. A good rule, child.”
Tears sprang to the lad’s eyes; for what the Prophet had said was true, and recalled all the stern tradition of the mountain tribes, who dwelt in tents and roved the desert on camels.
“Let us bless God and give thanks,” said the Master, bowing his head; and the boy understood neither the strange Deity to whom thanks were given nor what there was for thanks in a prison hut.
It must have been the white hair or the white beard; for though the wick was guttering lower in the breccia lamp, that luminous look seemed to shine brighter and brighter round the figure of the Prophet. The boy could see his hands like hands of snow in the gathering dusk of the hut; and his brow shone with the radiance of the sun’s white flame at dawn.
“Why did you wish to see Timothy?” he asked, as though reading the lad’s thought.
Thereat, the youth’s pent emotions of terror and despondency and fearful unknown danger broke in floods of speech.
“And, oh, Master,” cried the boy, finishing the narrative that the Idumean had forbidden him to tell, and holding back nothing but his love for the Princess, “my Lord Julius says there is no escape from the power of Rome from Gaul to the Ganges for a slave. Let me be your slave, oh, Master! Master, buy me and save me! I’ll serve you as never Emperor was served in thought and speech and act! I’ll serve you forever with no brand on my palms or shoulders.” And the little mountaineer, who never yet had bowed his head to earth as slave, fell at the old man’s knees sobbing, and would have placed the Prophet’s foot on his neck.
“What was your merchant master’s name in Colossé?”
“The Lord Philemon; and oh, my Master, I’ll pay him back my price and all the money I stole to run away to Rome. I’ll work my hands to the bone! I’ll earn wages for my price by acting as runner between the poles for the great Romans in the villas here. I’ll pay him back fourfold as the law demands. Only let me stay—keep me from the wolves of Rome—keep the Lord Julius from selling me to Nero’s Palace, or tearing out my tongue for telling you, or flogging me five hundred bastinadoes on my feet for running away, or betraying me for telling of Bernice’s kindness. I know now what I should or should not tell, nor why—”