clasped his hands in emotion, turned white, and
could but say, "Callista!" If she had made confession of the most heinous
of crimes,--if she had spoken of murder, or some black treachery against
himself,--of some enormity too great for words, it might have been; but his
sister!--his pride and delight, after all and certainly a Christian! Better
far had she said she was leaving him for ever, to abandon herself to the
degrading service of the temples; better had she said she had taken
hemlock, or had an asp in her bosom, than that she should choose to go out
of the world with the tortures, the ignominy, the malediction of the
religion of slaves.

Time waits for no man, nor does the court of justice, nor the _subsellia_
of the magistrate. The examination is to be held in the Basilica at the
Forum, and it requires from us a few words of explanation beforehand. The
local magistrates then could only try the lesser offences, and decide
civil suits; cases of suspected Christianity were reserved for the Roman
authorities. Still, preliminary examinations were not unfrequently
conducted by the city Duumvirs, or even in what may be called the police
courts. And this may have especially been the case in the Proconsulates.
Propraetors and Presidents were in the appointment of the Emperor, and
joined in their persons the supreme civil and military authority. Such
provinces, perhaps, were better administered; but there would be more of
arbitrariness in their rule, and it would not be so acceptable to the
ruled. The Proconsuls, on the other hand, were representatives of the
Senate, and had not the military force directly in their hands. The
natural tendency of this arrangement was to create, on the one hand, a
rivalry between the civil and military establishments; and, on the other,
to create a friendly feeling between the Proconsul and the local
magistracy. Thus, not long before the date of this history, we read of
Gordian, the Proconsul, enjoying a remarkable popularity in his African
province; and when the people rose against the exactions of the imperial
Procurator, as referred to in a former page, they chose and supported
Gordian against him. But however this might be in general, so it was at
this time at Sicca, that the Proconsular _Officium_ and the city
magistrates were on a good understanding with each other, whereas there
was some collision between the latter and the military. Not much depends
in the conduct of our story upon t