is influence in high places to get him off and out of Sicca
without any prejudice to his honour. He told him that he had managed it
privately, and if he had treated him with apparent harshness up to the
evening before, it was in order to save appearances with the apparitors
who had attended him. He then went on to inform him that the mob had
visited his cottage, and had caught some man there; he supposed some
accomplice or ally of his nephew's. They had seized him, and were bringing
him off, but the fellow had been clever enough to effect his escape. He
did not know more than this, but it had happened very fortunately, for the
general belief in the place was, that it was Agellius who had been taken,
and who had managed to give them the slip. Since it could not any longer
be safely denied that he was a Christian, though he (Jucundus) did not
think so himself, he had encouraged or rather had given his confirmation
to the report; and when some persons who had means of knowing had asserted
that the culprit was double the age of his nephew and more, and not at all
of his make or description, but a sort of slave, or rather that he was the
slave of Agellius who had belonged to his father Strabo, Jucundus had
boldly asserted that Agellius, in the emergency, had availed himself of
some of the remarkably powerful charms which Christians were known to
possess, and had made himself seem what he really was not, in order to
escape detection. It had not indeed answered the purpose entirely, for he
had actually been taken; but no blame in the charm, which perhaps, after
all, had enabled him to escape. However, Agellius was gone, he told
people, and a good riddance, and he hoped never to see him again. "But you
see, my dear boy," he concluded, "this was all talk for the occasion, for
I hope you will live here many years in respectability and credit. I
intend you should close my eyes when my time comes, and inherit whatever I
have to leave you; for as to that fellow Juba, he inspires me with no
confidence in him at all."

Agellius thanked his uncle with all his heart for his kind and successful
efforts on his behalf; he did not think there was a word he had said, in
the future he had sketched for him, which he could have wished altered.
But he thought Jucundus over-sanguine; much as he should like to live with
him and tend him in his old age, he did not think he should ever be
permitted to return to Sicca. He was a Christian, and must seek