message they knew that he was right. They would be ruined if it were
reported at Rome that they had publicly flogged Roman citizens without
trial.

Their prisoner, Paul, was now their judge. They climbed down from
their marble seats and walked on foot to the prison to plead with Paul
and Silas to leave the prison and not to tell against them what had
happened.

"Will you go away from the city?" they asked. "We are afraid of other
riots."

So Paul and Silas consented. But they went to the house where Lydia
lived--the home in which they had been staying in Philippi.

Paul cheered up the other Christian folk--Lydia and Luke and
Timothy--and told them how the jailor and his wife and family had all
become Christians.

"Keep the work of spreading the message here in Philippi going
strongly," said Paul to Luke and Timothy. "Be cheerfully prepared for
trouble." And then he and Silas, instead of going back to their own
land, went out together in the morning light of the early winter of
A.D. 50, away along the Western road over the hills to face perils
in other cities in order to carry the Good News to the people of the
West.


_The Trail of the Hero-Scout._