my friend. Oracles
and stars alike foretell me death from another cause than the treason of
a slave."

CHAPTER X.

Olympius followed Agne into the garden where he found her sitting by the
marble margin of a small pool, giving her little brother pieces of bread
to feed the swans with. He greeted her kindly and, taking up the child,
showed him a ball which rose and fell on the jet of water from the
fountain. Papias was not at all frightened by the big man with his white
beard, for a bright and kindly gleam shone in his eyes, and his voice
was soft and attractive as he asked him whether he had such another ball
and could toss it as cleverly as the fountain did.

Papias said: "No," and Olympius, turning to Agne, went on:

"You should get him a ball. There is no better plaything, for play ought
to consist in pleasant exertion which is in itself its object and gain.
Play is the toil of a little child; and a ball, which he can throw and
run after or catch, trains his eye, gives exercise to his limbs and
includes a double moral which men of every age and position should act
upon: To look down on the earth and keep his gaze on the heavens."

Agne nodded agreement and thanks, while Olympius set the child down
and bid him run away to the paddock where some tame gazelles were kept.
Then, going straight to the point, he said:

"I hear you have declined to sing in the temple of Isis; you have been
taught to regard the goddess to whom many good men turn in faith and
confidence, as a monster of iniquity, but, tell me, do you know what she
embodies?"

"No," replied Agne looking down; but she hastily rose from her seat and
added with some spirit: "And I do not want to know, for I am a Christian
and your gods are not mine."

"Well, well; your beliefs, of course, differ from ours in many points:
still, I fancy that you and I have much in common. We belong to those
who have learnt to 'look upwards'--there goes the ball, up again!--and
who find comfort in doing so. Do you know that many men believe that the
universe was formed by concurrence of mechanical processes and is still
slowly developing, that there is no divinity whose love and power guard,
guide and lend grace to the lives of men?"

"Oh! yes, I have been obliged to hear many such blasphemous things in
Rome!"

"And they ran off you like water off the silvery sheen of that swan's
plumage as he dips and raises his neck. Those who deny a God are, in
your estimation,