“Is this so?” asked the bishop of Miriam.

“It is so,” she answered.  “This Libyan was the servant of my grandmother.  She nursed both my mother and myself, and many a time has saved my life.  Have no fear, she is faithful.”

“Your pardon,” said the bishop with a grave smile and addressing Nehushta, “but you who are old will know that the Christian who entertains strangers sometimes entertains a devil.”  Then he lifted up his hands and blessed them, greeting them in the name of their Master.

“So, maid Miriam,” he said, still smiling, “it would seem that I was no false prophet, and though you walked in the Triumph and were sold in the slave-ring—­for this much I have heard—­still the Angel of the Lord went with you.”

“Father, he went with me,” she answered, “and he leads me here.”

Then they told him all the tale, and how Miriam sought a refuge from Domitian.  He looked at her, stroking his long beard.

“Is there anything you can do?” he asked.  “Anything useful, I mean?  But perhaps that is a foolish question, seeing that women—­especially those who are well-favoured—­do not learn a trade.”

“I have learnt a trade,” answered Miriam, flushing a little.  “Once I was held of some account as a sculptor; indeed I have heard that your Emperor Nero decreed divine honours to a bust from my hand.”

The bishop laughed outright.  “The Emperor Nero!  Well, the poor madman has gone to his own place, so let us say no more of him.  But I heard of that bust; indeed I saw it; it was a likeness of Marcus Fortunatus, was it not, and in its fashion a great work?  But our people do not make such things; we are artisans, not artists.”

“The artisan should be an artist,” said Miriam, setting her mouth.

“Perhaps, but as a rule he isn’t.  Do you think that you could mould lamps?”

“There is nothing I should like better, that is if I am not forced to copy one pattern,” she added as an afterthought.

“Then,” said the bishop, “I think, daughter, that I can show you how to earn a living, where none are likely to seek for you.”

Not a hundred paces away from the carpenter’s shop where the master craftsman, Septimus, worked, was another manufactory, in which vases, basins, lamps, and all such articles were designed, moulded and baked.  The customers who frequented the place, wholesale merchants for the most part, noted from and after the day of this interview a new workwoman, who, so far as her rough blouse permitted them to judge, seemed to be young and pretty, seated in a corner apart, beneath a window by the light of which she laboured.  Later on they observed also, those of them who had any taste, that among the lamps produced by the factory appeared some of singular and charming design, so good, indeed, that although the makers reaped little extra benefit, the middlemen found no difficulty in disposing of these pieces at a high price.  All day long Miriam sat fashioning them, while old Nehushta, who had learnt something of the task years ago by Jordan, prepared and tempered the clay and carried the finished work to the furnace.