thought, far, far, below, a tiny plain, a little landscape woven out of light. And, winding through the plain, a peaceful river.

The windlass groaned louder and yet louder. A vat rose up into the great mouth of the hole, laden with Cæsar's ore.

Six slaves ran up (0 happy men, suffered to work here in the sunlight!) and received the precious substance in monstrous wicker baskets. These they carried to the sheds where the crucibles lay.

Some of the slaves were branded, some not. And Simon knew that they that were branded were the worst hated and despised.

And all of the newly arrived slaves but Simon, at an order from their officer, being freely unshackled, stepped down into the vat, the branded and the unbranded alike. But for Simon there was no room. And the vat descended, and all the men that were standing in it were looking wholly down.

After a time, the officer came up to the Jew, and spurned him again, and buffeted him on the mouth, saying: "Is it worth the while of officers to wait for the vat again, when only a Jew remaineth? Moreover, the vat hath work to do in lifting ore. Get thee down, as a consequence, into the deeps of the mine by the pegs that are fastened in the wall of the pit. By them have better men than thou descended when the vat was not running. When thou hast passed the openings of the many galleries and come to the bottommost level, and canst no farther go, then will a tall man appear before thee with a good scourge. He will take thee to the place where thou shalt labor. Descend!"

At that the man spurned the Jew once more, and spat upon him. And it came to the mind of Simon that he should kill this brute, and getting him swords from the soldiers standing by make a happy departure. Or, if he died-that also, was it not well enough? But, in a way he could not understand, the hand of the Jew was holden yet again. He seemed verily to lie beneath some great compulsion. As he looked back over his life-which he did in the one second wherein his shackles were stricken away-it seemed that the whole of his existence had been only a matter of compulsion.

He gazed at the distant plain once more, with the river running through it, then at the people round about. Not far away, the decurion and the tribune were speaking still together of Jerusalem and Jesus.

He looked down into the pit, and beheld, at first, merely a horror of darkness. Next, he saw the nearest of the pegs whereof the officer had spoken. As if moved by unseen hands, he got down over the margin of the pit, beginning to descend.

It was not himself, he thought, that went the imperious way to further wretchedness, but only the mere shape and semblance of a man; the ghost of a person in whom was nothing left but shame and sorrow; rather a bit of sheer suffering, or super-suffering, marble-a statue in the process of being carved and with a whole infinity of outraged nerves within it, underneath the hands of a masterful, a divine, an eternally inexorable, Compulsion.

CHAPTER XXX

CONATUS, THE MAN WHO WAS FREE TO CHOOSE

NOT as a thing moved by superior forces from without, but as a man whom his own free volition urges, did Trivialis of Cyrene and all the countries of the world, go down into yet another hateful mine. And there he labored with a strange incessancy.

The manner of his going was this.

On the day when he had felt the whole earth shaking, after it had been in darkness from the sixth hour to the ninth, he had grown high wondering if much less sorrowful, and had thought on many things. But, when the morning was come, he considered: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow ye may die."

He went, therefore, later, into the pottery-market, crying: "Who will undertake to supply a dinner? Who will undertake to supply a dinner?" as the custom was among them that would let the making of a banquet.

But, of a sudden, a passer caught his arm, crying: "Thief! Scoundrel! Liar! Give me back my purse, thou scoundrel, thou!"

But Trivialis pretended he knew nothing at all of the man's bulga. And when the man would have pressed him further, he tore from him, and, getting his feet together, ran away.

The robbed one after.

But Trivialis, he of all the countries of the world, understood the devious windings of the city. So, in a trice, by doublings and counterdoublings, runnings up and down stairs, and dartings in and out of courts and also along galleries and through waste places, he came at length anear unto a pile of broken pottery, and, stooping as he ran, gathered up the bulga-which he had dropped there on an earlier passing.

And after many days he found out Euryophthalmus, and they twain went into a wine-house, and became a-drunken.

They passed thereafter into the temple of Chronos, who by the

Romans is called Saturn, a decrepit and baldheaded man with a scythe in his hand. The father of Zeus himself was Chronos, and, thereby, of many other gods. For that very reason mocked these fellows him, saying: "What art thou, O Time, but the fit subject of a joke, and also all the other gods that be, seeing these are the sons and daughters of Time only?" And they flung filth on the statue of Chronos, and cursed both him and his twelve descendants, the great celestial deities.

The watch came, and ran after the fellows. And Euryophthalmus escaped, but Trivialis stumbled and fell to the ground.

And him they led to the agora, and into the court which is called Stoa Basileios, or Royal Portico, for here it was that crimes against the gods were rightly justiciable.

There the fellow was set, all of a tremble, in the presence of the angry and dusty multitude which had followed him, and of all the watchmen of the temple-them that had fetched him hither. But soon he beheld again, to the right of the Stoa, his old comrade, Euryophthalmus. And Euryophthalmus made a mirthful countenance, which caused that Trivialis laughed, and then Euryophthalmus made off again to safety.

But when the Archon Basileus-he that would try Trivialis's cause was come, then the mouth of Trivialis dried up with terror, and his heart was wax.

The Archon sate upon his high seat, and read at first an ancient parchment with calm intensity. Nor did he vouchsafe to look down about the crowd.

But, after a time, he glanced from his manuscript, and then his solemn-seeming eyes rested on Trivialis. Yet was his mind, as before, playing still about that ancient scroll. And Trivialis laughed. For the fellow never could be serious long.

The Archon looked upon the culprit with a sad, sweet smile. He said, as his look came clearly to the present hour

"Have I already adjudged thee, or waitest thou still?"

Trivialis laughed again. He said, at his ease: "I still await, O Archon Basileus, the trial thou wilt give."

"Knowest thou," asked the judge, "that I was drifting in the mighty past? It was even so. For behold, the present is a very little thing, and there is nothing of it. And all the great are dead. All the great are dead."

Trivialis laughed again.

The judge looked up once more (for his eyes had again gone to his book) and said, "Thou doest well to laugh, O friend, for there

is nothing now that is worthy of more than laughter. Thou hast laughed before, too, I warrant, to judge by the little tiny wrinkles a-playing round thy mouth. They be practiced wrinkles, they be practiced wrinkles."

Trivialis laughed once more, admitting: "Yea, they be practiced wrinkles, O Archon!" And he thought, "This, of a truth, will be a very pleasant judge."

"Thou art an Epicurean, I warrant. But no. Thou then wouldst live almost entirely within thy senses, and I see thee better than that. Not an Epicurean? Well, then, a Stoic. But Stoicism is, at bottom, nothing but pride; and we need, we need-humility. In a world like this-but after death (according to the Stoics) there is nothing for us but cosmical ruin. Would that some one from above could give us a great assurance of life eternal-and of life worth living eternally. Thou art witty, sensual, mirthful, forceful, and eloquentbut not of much force. Ah hum, I am sleepy. What is thy name?" "Trivialis."

"Trivialis. Hast thou already been adjudged, or dost thou still await me? A fitting name, methinks-Trivialis." He smiled once more his thin, wan smile, as were he a very great man all aweary of this world, yet one of far too sweet a nature that he should care to weight a fellow being with his own weariness.

"Whence comest thou?"

"From the city of Cyrene, also from everywhere.”

"What dost thou in Athens? Art a student?”

"I came on a mission of revenge for all men have revenges. But behold, the revenge is accomplished. Yet there is still another matter. A treasure was entrusted unto me. I have squandered it. For I am light and merry of heart, and very thoughtless. I was even born so. When I have no master-I am nothing. Now my master's son, which is Samson, which is also Solomon, and whose home is in Cyrene, or else Jerusalem, he is a priest unto the world for the sake of Jehovah."

"Jehovah-I have heard somewhat about Jehovah. The Jews—

Jehovah."

Now Trivialis would fain have spoken out before the Archon, yea and before the whole world, saying: "I can indeed inform thee as about Jehovah. He is the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Creator both of time and eternity. So much I have learned, yea and far more also, from the lips of Jehovah's priests, even His chosen people, the Jews." But the man's heart faltered, and he spake not out at all concerning Jehovah. Instead, saith he

"I, on my part, have no message unto any one. May the gods take care of themselves."

Then the Archon frowned deeply. His bright blue eyes grew dark, and he bent them on the frightened Trivialis, seeking, as it might have been, to pierce that man to the soul. "He is charged with sacrilege," brake in the officer of the watch, though he had not been asked, "sacrilege even against Chronos, which is Time, and all the other gods, which be Time's descendants." Said the Archon, "It is enough. Come hither, and stand at judgment beneath the tribunal, fellow."

Went up the trembling caitiff even to the tribunal itself, seeking on the way a semblance of carelessness.

"Fearest thou nothing?" demanded the judge. "Knowest thou not I am here on the authority of Cæsar? In a way I am Cæsar. Knowest thou that not, and fearest thou nothing?”

"Nothing, most truly, O mighty Archon, in all this endless world nothing, save only to be alone. I would crawl and fawn, like a starved dog, to the foot of any man, though he were a beggar, rather than be alone. To get into company, there to laugh-that is all I seek."

The Archon dreamed a little longer, as if he would try the man upon some deeper principle which he had nearly forgot.

Suddenly he fell asleep.

Trivialis looked upon him for a time with mingled amusement and sorrow. The splendid old Archon, the sweetly-smiling Archon which tried to understand his fellow beings that he might do unto them beautiful justice, was the dying flower and type of the jurisprudential portion of the old Greek civilization, that gently perishing past which still was kept alive for a little by the hand of Cæsar. And Trivialis perceived this matter clearly, becoming, in consequence, more and more sorrowful.

Now, as he would not be too sorrowful, he began to look againto the right of the open Stoa-in that direction wherein he had aforetime beheld Euryophthalmus. But Euryophthalmus had gone away, and there was passing by the side of the Altar to the Unknown God— which was straight behind the dais of the Archon-a beautiful young man of mighty stature, who seemed to be compact of supernatural light. And with him was a woman of marvelous beauty, half Jew and half Greek, also two mere striplings, one of a sweet the other of ecstatic countenance.

All at once, they four were shut out of view.

And Trivialis heard the low hum of the city, and looked up to the