“We are disciples of Paul,” he said in Greek.
The woman flung the door open and drew them in.
The grotto was empty but for a taper beneath a wooden cross, but at the far end was a cleft in the rock—the real end of the pass leading to grottos deeper in the mountain.
“And He shall hide His own in a cleft in the rock,” said Apollos. “Go you within and tell the Lady Thecla why we are here. Keep your sword drawn at the cleft in the rock. If they break past my guard, strike as they go through yon crack in the wall. I would open the wicket when the rioters come.”
There is no record of what the drunken rioters said, when the wicket opened on a white bearded face instead of woman’s; but when they would have smashed the door and forced entrance, Apollos drew a sword with blade fine as Damascus razor and inquired calmly in tones too soft to be safe what he might do for them. How could he serve them best? They paused at that and fell back under the arch to confer. Came a thunder of iron hoofs echoing in rip-rap over the stone road and the drunken crew turned to flee pursuit of Roman guard; but flee—where? This road ended in the blind wall of a stoned up cavern. They dashed back for hiding in the caves lower down. There were echoes, oaths, clash of swords on metal armor, neigh and scream of terrified horses; and a Roman centurion galloped to the door.
“What did you do with your trapped beasts? Have you taken them prisoners?” demanded Apollos.
“We took no prisoners. Not one escaped. We drove them over the precipice. Yon eagle will have full crop for her nestlings to-morrow; and that lion below will not roar so loud in hunger.”
And so Thecla lived to the great age of ninety years and her memory is kept sacred on September 24, to this day. Without dancing girls for the Love Temples of Daphne Gardens, all the beauty and lure of the place failed to hold the wintering pleasure seekers of Antioch. The very winter that Onesimus passed over the Roman Road to become Bishop of Ephesus, the great Love Temples of Venus were destroyed by fire. The Christians said they had been struck by lightning as a manifestation of God’s vengeance for the attempt on the Thecla Community, even as lightning had once before delivered her from the Adversary. The merchants of Antioch, who yearly spent a hundred thousand talents to draw the pleasure seekers from Rome to winter in Daphne Gardens, said the Christians had set them on fire; but the lure of Daphne Gardens fell off from that year. To this day, you can find signs of the Cross and inscriptions by the early Christians in the grottos and caverns, between Antioch and the sea; but of Daphne Gardens, hardly enough remains to mark the site, did we not know it was ten miles in circumference, and five miles from the four hundred crumbling marble towers of Antioch. War and plunder broke the power of Antioch; and what war and plunder could not destroy, the earthquake threw down; but the Faith kept holy in the grotto is reënacted to-day wherever “the new wine bursts the old bottles” and the Loving Cup goes round to commemorate Him who first broke women’s fetters.
CHAPTER V
“AND THERE SHALL BE NO MORE DEATH”
The Bishop of Ephesus sat dreaming in the garden between his church and his house.