"Lift but a finger again, O dog, and I will kill thee straight. The giant is oddly agitated," he remarked to the tribune of the troop, "and clearly intendeth a departure."

Then quoth the decurion again, "I tell thee, Tribune, that Jesus arose and was seen by many which could not be in error. Pilate did repent him that he had given judgment against Jesus, and Caiaphas and all that were with him in that sorrowful matter, lay closely hid, till that the storm had blown itself to pieces.

"But Jesus arose.

"The Pharisees had set a watch about His sepulcher, lest haply His disciples should come and steal His body away.-But Jesus arose." And he described all the marvelous events of the Resurrection.

He spake also of the prophecies, which had been fulfilled in Christ. So the Tribune cried, at length: "I must, hereafter, learn much more about Jesus."

But the decurion: "The prophecies about the Jew- Shall not they also be fulfilled?" But what he said further, Simon heard not, for the procurator of the mines having come up with him, cursed him, and spurned him, and bade him march on.

Simon at first believed that he and the few criminals which yet remained were also to pass down into the valley where the bridges and the mines were. But this was not to be.

The file of troops wound upward into a country where the face of the sky was covered with dark, disordered clouds, mingled with great smoke, and where the sides of the mountain were piled with heaps of ashes. Here and again the walls of the mountain were punctured with tiny pits. From one of these a naked man with great scars all over him came running breathless. A soldier, following, struck him on the head with a sword, that he died instantly.

Then said Simon in his soul, "Did Jesus arise from the dead! To what purpose? But all such things are lies. For behold, even I, a priest of the Almighty, am sentenced to such a life as that which is in these pits. Would that my soul had died ere my body was born into such a world."

Then he heard again the voices of the tribune and the decurion, who were treading close beside him. The decurion was saying to his fellow officer: "But Jesus saith unto him, 'Because thou hast seen me thou hast believed; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.'"'

And at this there came a gleam of lightning from the sky, and the voice as it were of Jehovah rolling round about the mountains.

Then the Jew in his heart: "Oh for the strength of a thousand, and vengeance on all that do encompass me!" He thought on the weakness of his shackles, and how readily he might have wrested swords from two of the soldiers (as Lampadephorus, long ago, had taught him the way to do) and then might play the dimachærus, cleaning a path unto light, unto life, unto eternal liberty.

But his hands were holden, for he perceived that all the earth was against him, partly as being a Jew and partly for better reasons. So he marched with the other slaves.

Presently they came to where great pans of golden ore were smelting, and he passed through sheds, betwixt long files of vessels wherein lay the molten gold itself. And he thought "This, all this, is Cæsar's. Had I had but a little more of Cæsar's gold, I should not now be a slave intended unto the mines." Looking at the gold, he beheld therein his own weary countenance. He shuddered and gazed in another direction, for he was sick at heart, having beheld in the gold the letters on his forehead. A subprocurator took charge now of the slaves, and brought them round to a place where a vast hole was that ran straight down into the mysteries of the mountain. As if to mock the weary convicts, the clouds tore apart, flooding the world with a heaven of splendor. A gigantic windlass sate above the hole, and the windlass was turned by a number of horses moving round and round eternally.

Then knew Simon of Cyrene that here his course as a man was ended, for, from out these mines with the upright shaft (as often he had heard) the slaves came never into light again.

The procession halted and formed a ring of sheer woe round about the pit.

Said one of the officers unto another, "What is the name of this particular mine?-for I know that all of the mines together in these many mountains are called 'The Mines of The Wretched,' but of this particular mine I know not the name.'

Said another officer, "The name of this mine is 'The Nameless Mine'-for that it is clearly the worst of all the mines that are, or have been, or ever yet again can be, and hence no fitting name could be found for it, and they that named it named it only 'The Nameless Mine'-and Hell were a pleasant place by the side of it."

So Simon of the Blasted Heart, standing quite still, and knowing that this was the end of his dear looking in the light, gazed over the now sun-filled landscape.

Beyond the scarred and scoriæd rocks and the long black sheds, and the farther-reaching mountains, he could just discern, as he

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 (O 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

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