‘But what harm would the king have done to us?’
‘None to a boy like me, nor to one who is free-born; but—’
‘You take me for a runaway slave?’ asked Onesimus.
Ofellus nodded his head, and added, ‘I saw the king among the trees.’ And then he quoted an old Roman song about—
‘The dim lake that sleeps
Beneath Aricia’s trees;
The trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign:
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.’