wear,
be stained by disgrace, and that I am minded to search your house, and if
I find my undutiful wife and your son within its walls, I will carry them
and you before the judge, and sue for my rights."

"You will seek in vain," replied Petrus, commanding himself with
difficulty. "My word is yea or nay, and I repeat once more no, we harbor
neither her nor him. As for Dorothea and myself--neither of us is
inclined to interfere in your concerns, but neither will we permit
another--be he whom he may--to interfere in ours. This threshold shall
never be crossed by any but those to whom I grant permission, or by the
emperor's judge, to whom I must yield. You, I forbid to enter. Sirona is
not here, and you would do better to seek her elsewhere than to fritter
away your time here."

"I do not require your advice!" cried the centurion wrathfully.

"And I," retorted Petrus, "do not feel myself called upon to arrange your
matrimonial difficulties. Besides you can get back Sirona without our
help, for it is always more difficult to keep a wife safe in the house,
than to fetch her back when she has run away."

"You shall learn whom you have to deal with!" threatened the centurion,
and he threw a glance round at the slaves, who had collected in the
court, and who had been joined by the senator's eldest son. "I shall call
my people together at once, and if you have the seducer among you we will
intercept his escape."

"Only wait an hour," said Dorothea, now taking up the word, while she
gently touched her husband's hand, for his self-control was almost
exhausted, "I and you will see Polykarp ride home on his father's horse.
Is it only from the roses that my son threw into your wife's window, that
you suppose him to be her seducer--she plays so kindly with all his
brothers and sisters--or are there other reasons, which move you to
insult and hurt us with so heavy an accusation?"

Often when wrathful men threaten to meet with an explosion, like black
thunder-clouds, a word from the mouth of a sensible woman gives them
pause, and restrains them like a breath of soft wind.

Phoebicius had no mind to listen to any speech from Polykarp's mother,
but her question suggested to him for the first time a rapid retrospect
of all that had occurred, and he could not conceal from himself that his
suspicions rested on weak grounds. And at the same time he now said to
himself, that if indeed Sirona had fled into the desert instead of to the
s