e, and weigh, and measure what is
promised me. I wish to have a sample and an instalment. I am too old for
chaff. Eat, drink, and be merry, that's my philosophy, that's my religion;
and I know no better. To-day is ours, to-morrow is our children's."

After a pause, he added, bitterly, "If truth could get Callista out of
prison, instead of getting her into it, I should have something to say to
truth."

"Callista in prison!" cried Agellius with surprise and distress, "what do
you mean, Jucundus?"

"Yes, it's a fact; Callista _is_ in prison," answered he, "and on
suspicion of Christianity."

"Callista! Christianity!" said Agellius, bewildered, "do I hear aright?
She a Christian! oh, impossible, uncle! you don't mean to say that she is
in prison. Tell me, tell me, my dear, dear Jucundus, what this wonderful
news means."

"You ought to know more about it than I," answered he, "if there is any
meaning in it. But if you want my opinion, here it is. I don't believe she
is more a Christian than I am; but I think she is over head and ears in
love with you, and she has some notion that she is paying you a
compliment, or interesting you in her, or sharing your fate--(_I_ can't
pretend to unravel the vagaries and tantarums of the female mind)--by
saying that she is what she is _not_. If not, perhaps she has done it out
of spite and contradiction. You can never answer for a woman."

"Whom should she spite? whom contradict?" cried Agellius, thrown for the
moment off his balance. "O Callista! Callista in prison for Christianity!
Oh if it's true that she is a Christian! but what if she is not?" he added
with great terror, "what if she's not, and yet in prison, as if she were?
How are we to get her out, uncle? Impossible! no, she's not a
Christian--she is not at all. She ought not to be there! Yet how
wonderful!"

"Well, I am sure of it, too," said Jucundus; "I'd stake the best image in
my shop that she's not a Christian; but what if she is perverse enough to
say she _is_? and such things are not uncommon. Then, I say, what in the
world is to be done? If she says she is, why she is. There you are; and
what can you do?"

"You don't mean to say," exclaimed Agellius, "that that sweet delicate
child is in that horrible hole; impossible!" and he nearly shrieked at the
thought. "What is the meaning of it all? dear, dear uncle, do tell me
something more about it. Why did you not tell me before? What _can_ be
done?"

Jucundus thought