ked up the purse he thought to himself:

"I may buy ship and vineyard back again; but I would send four more
after those if I could undo this luckless deed. If I were a better and
a worthier man, I might not so easily give others credit for being evil
and unworthy."

CHAPTER IX.

The town of Alexandria was stirred to its very foundations. From dawn
till night every centre of public traffic and intercourse was the scene
of hostile meetings between Christians and heathen, with frequent frays
and bloodshed, only stopped by the intervention of the soldiery.
Still, as we see that the trivial round of daily tasks is necessarily
fulfilled, even when the hand of Fate lies heaviest on a household,
and that children cannot forego their play even when their father is
stretched on his death-bed, so the minor interests of individual lives
pursued their course, even in the midst of the general agitation and
peril.

The current of trade and of public business was, of course, checked at
many points, but they never came to a stand-still. The physician visited
the sick, the convalescent made his first attempt, leaning on a friendly
arm, to walk from his bedroom to the "viridarium," and alms were given
and received. Hatred was abroad and rampant, but love held its own,
strengthening old ties and forming new ones. Terror and grief weighed
on thousands of hearts, while some tried to make a profit out of
the prevailing anxiety, and others--many others--went forth, as
light-hearted as ever, in pursuit of pleasure and amusement.

Horses were ridden and driven in the Hippodrome, and feasts were held
in the pleasure-houses of Canopus, with music and noisy mirth; in the
public gardens round the Paneum cock-fighting and quail-fighting were as
popular as ever, and eager was the betting in new gold or humble
copper. Thus may we see a child, safe on the roof of its father's house,
floating its toy boat on the flood that has drowned them all out; thus
might a boy fly his gaudy kite in the face of a gathering storm; thus
does the miser, on whom death has already laid its bony hand, count his
hoarded coin; thus thoughtless youth dances over the heaving soil at the
very foot of a volcano. What do these care for the common weal? Each
has his separate life and personal interests. What he himself needs or
desires--the greatest or the least--is to him more important and more
absorbing than the requirements of the vast organism in which he is no
m