“But I shall die before then!” cried Paula.  “The Nabathaean, you say, is here and willing to go.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Then we will secure him,” said Paula resolutely.  Perpetua, however, who must have discussed the matter fully with her fellow-countryman, shook her head mournfully and said:  “He asks too much for us!”

She then explained that the man, being such a good linguist, had already been offered an engagement to conduct a caravan to Ctesiphon.  This would be a year’s pay to him, and he was not inclined to break off his negotiations with the merchant Hanno and search the deserts of Arabia Petraea for less than two thousand drachmae.

“Two thousand drachmae!” echoed Paula, looking down in distress and confusion; but she presently looked up and exclaimed with angry determination:  “How dare they keep from me that which is my own?  If my uncle refuses what I have to ask, and will ask, then the inevitable must happen, though for his sake it will grieve me; I must put my affairs in the hands of the judges.”

“The judges?” Perpetua smiled.  “But you cannot lay a complaint without your kyrios, and your uncle is yours.  Besides:  before they have settled the matter the messenger may have been to Ctesiphon and back, far as it is.”

Again her nurse entreated her to have patience till the horse-fair should be over.  Paula fixed her eyes on the ground.  She seemed quite crushed; but Perpetua started violently and Hiram drew back a step when she suddenly broke out in a loud, joyful cry of “Father in Heaven, I have what we need!”

“How, child, what?” asked the nurse, pressing her hand to her heart.  But Paula vouchsafed no information; she turned quickly to the Syrian: 

“Is the outer court-yard clear yet?  Are the people gone?” she asked.

The reply was in the affirmative.  The freed servants had retired when Hiram left them.  The officials would not break up for some time yet, but there was less difficulty in passing them.

“Very good,” said the girl.  “Then you, Hiram, lead the way and wait for me by the little side door.  I will give you something in my room which will pay the Nabathaean’s charges ten times over.  Do not look so horrified, Betta.  I will give him the large emerald out of my mother’s necklace.”  The woman clasped her hands, and cried out in dismay and warning.

“Child, child!  That splendid gem! an heirloom in the family—­that stone which came to you from the saintly Emperor Theodosius—­to sell that of all things!  Nay-to throw it away; not to rescue your father either, but merely—­yes child, for that is the truth, merely because you lack patience to wait two little weeks!”

“That is hard, that is unjust, Betta,” Paula broke in reprovingly.  “It will be a question of a month, and we all know how much depends on the messenger.  Do you forget how highly Hiram spoke of this very man’s intelligence?  And besides—­must I, the younger, remind you?—­What is the life of man?  An instant may decide his life or death; and my father is an old man, scarred from many wounds even before the siege.  It may make just the difference between our meeting, or never meeting again.”