The poor fellow’s heart was heavy and his mind was little bent on tales and amusements.  All life was embittered.  The services required of him usually seemed to him of paramount importance, beyond everything else; but to-day it was different.  He had an obscure feeling as though fate herself had released him from all his duties, as if misfortune had cut the bonds which bound him to his service to the Emperor, and had made him an isolated and lonely being.  It even came into his head whether he should not take in his hand all the gold pieces given him sometimes by Hadrian, or which the wealthy folks who wished to be the foremost of those introduced into the Emperor’s presence, after waiting in the antechamber, had flung to him or slipped into his hand—­make his escape and carouse away all that he possessed in the taverns of the great city, in wine and the gay company of women.  It was all the same to him what might happen to him.

If he were caught he would probably be flogged to death; but he had had kicks and blows in plenty before he had got into the Emperor’s service, nay; when he was brought to Rome he had once even been hunted with dogs.  If he lost his life, after all what would it matter?  He would have done with it then, once for all, and the future offered him no prospect but perpetual fatigue in the service of a restless master, anxiety and contempt.  He was a thoroughly good-hearted being who could not bear to hurt any one, and who found it equally hard to disturb a fellow-man in his pleasures or amusement.  He felt particularly disinclined to do so just now, for a wounded soul is keenly alive to the moods and feelings of others; so, as he approached the group of workmen, from among whom he proposed to choose his water-carrier, he determined that he would not interrupt the story-teller, on whose lips the gaze of his audience was riveted with interest.

The glare of the blaze under the soup-kettle fell full on the speaker’s face.  He was an old laborer, but his long hair proclaimed him a freeman.  His abundant white beard induced Mastor to suppose that he must be a Jew or a Phoenician, but there was nothing remarkable in the old man, who was dressed in a poor and scanty tunic, excepting his peculiarly brilliant eyes, which were immovably fixed on the heavens, and the oblique position in which he held his head, supporting it on the left side with his raised hands.

“And now,” said the speaker, dropping his arms, “let us go back to our labors, my brethren.  ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’ it is written.  It is often hard to us old men to heave stones and bend our stiff backs for so long together, but we are nearer than you younger ones to the happy future.  Life is not easy to all of us, but it is we who labor and are heavy laden—­we above all others—­that the Lord has bidden to be his guests, and not last among us the slaves.”

“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” interrupted one of the younger men repeating the words of Christ.