He began to pace again.
“A slave’s tale; a miserable slave’s tale. Why should you hear it? Oh, Mistress, you can do nothing, nothing.” Yet he burst out with the telling.
“My freedom money. It is gone! Gone, I tell you. My damned master knew all the while where it was hid. He let me work and hope and hoard it. And now when all but two drachmæ are there”—he held out his hand with these last coins—“he came and seized it. The beast! How can the just gods let such a man walk the earth?”
Theria came nearer, interested, absorbed.
“You mean that you earned the money to buy your freedom?”
“Yes, Despoina—to buy it from Apollo.”
He was referring to one of the noblest customs of the Oracle. Both of them knew it well. A slave might sometimes be so fortunate as to get money to buy himself from his master. But the Greek master could seize him again and once caught, the slave had no redress. But Apollo of Delphi would buy slaves. They could come to his temple and pay the money down to the god. The terms of the transaction were engraved on the stones of the temple foundation for all men to see. Then the slave went free, protected by this divine ownership. No former master would dare touch him. Wherever the former slave might go, he was under divine protection, Apollo’s ward.
“How long did it take you to earn the money?” she asked.
“Four years, Mistress. Oh, gods! four long years. I cannot do it again, and, if I did, would not my master seize it as before?”
“How did you earn it?”