"Cut the silk, Nou," said Miriam when the Captain Gallus had gone. "Quick. I have no knife."
Nehushta obeyed smiling and the letter was unrolled. It, or those parts of it which concern us, ran thus: "To the lady Miriam, from Marcus the Roman, her friend, by the hand of the Captain Gallus.
"Dear friend and lady, greeting. Already since I came here I have written you one letter, but this day news has reached me that the ship which bore it foundered off the coast of Sicily. So, as Neptune has that letter, and with it many good men, although I write more ill than I do most things, I send you another by this occasion, hoping, I who am vain, that you have not forgotten me, and that the reading of it may even give you pleasure. Most dear Miriam, know that I accomplished my voyage to Rome in safety, visiting your grandsire on the way to pay him a debt I owed. But that story you will perhaps have heard.
"From Tyre I sailed for Italy, but was cast away upon the coasts of Melita, where many of us were drowned. By the favour of some god, however--ah! what god I wonder--I escaped, and taking another ship came safely to Brundisium, whence I travelled as fast as horses would carry me to Rome. Here I arrived but just in time, for I found my uncle Caius very will. Believing, moreover, that I had been drowned in the shipwreck at Melita, he was about to make a will bequeathing his property to the Emperor Nero, but by good fortune of this he had said nothing. Had he done so I should, I think, be as poor to-day as when I left you, dear, and perhaps poorer still, for I might have lost my head with my inheritance.
"As it was I found favour in the sight of my uncle Caius, who a week after my arrival executed a formal testament leaving to me all his land, goods, and moneys, which on his death three months later I inherited. Thus I have become rich--so rich that now, having much money to spend, by some perversity which I cannot explain, I have grown careful and spend as little as possible. After I had entered into my inheritance I made a plan to return to Judæa, for one reason and one alone--to be near to you, most sweet Miriam. At the last moment I was stayed by a very evil chance. That bust which you made of me I had managed to save from the shipwreck and bring safe to Rome--now I wish it was at the bottom of the sea, and you shall learn why.