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WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST 273
man's face, and put the gold in a purse, which I made him
stamp with his seal. Here is the bag. Seize his hand, take
off his iron ring, and see whether this be not his seal. If it
is, clearly he, and not the poor youth yonder, was the purchaser
of the poison.'
Onesimus turned his eyes on the slave.
His face had assumed a deadly pallor, and all his limbs had
burst into a cold sweat ;
but even when his seal was recognised,
he continued to stammer protestations of his innocence.
He was tortured, but would not confess. Then the physician
'
rose with a mysterious smile. Enough of tortures,' he said.
'
The time has come to unravel this web of villany. I sold to
yonder wretch, not poison, but mandragora. If, indeed, the
boy drank that draught, he does but sleep. About this time
he will be awakening, and may be brought back to the light
of day.' The magistrates at once sent messengers to the
sepulchre where the boy's body had been laid. The father
with his own hands removed the cover of the tomb, and there
lay the little lad, unchanged, and just beginning to awake,
with intense astonishment depicted on his features. Striving
in vain to express his joy in words, the happy father
father once more of two dear sons, both of whom he thought
that he had lost folded the child to his heart in a close
embrace, and carried him as he was, with all his grave-clothes
about him, to the judgment seat. Terror-stricken by such
a portent, the woman confessed her crime, and was sentenced
to perpetual banishment the slave was crucified. 1
;
Next morning Onesimus, as he accompanied the priests
and their ass, saw the criminal hanging naked on his cross.
He was a man of fine proportions and in the prime of life,
and his strength was slowly ebbing away in horrible and
feverish torture. The Galli as they passed spat on him, but
Onesimus stayed behind. The wretch was not only living,
though in extreme agony, but would probably continue to live
for two days more, unless the wolves got at him or the
fit
magistrates thought to send their lictors to end his life
by two blows of a ponderous mallet in order to save the
trouble of having the cross watched. It was no base curiosity
which made the Phrygian linger by that spectacle of shame
and anguish. It was rather an awful pity a heart-rending
remembrance. Sunk, fallen, ruined, guilty as he himself
*
Note 33.
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