"His history?" cried Joanna. "If he were to tell it, in all its details
from beginning to end, the night would wane and breakfast would get cold.
He has had as many adventures as travelled Odysseus. But tell us
something husband; you know there is nothing we should like better."

"I must be off to my duties," said the leech, and when he had taken a
friendly leave of the others and bidden farewell to Paula with less
effusiveness than of late, Rufinus began his story.

"I was born in Alexandria, where, at that time, commerce and industry
still flourished. My father was an armorer; above two hundred slaves and
free laborers were employed in his work-shops. He required the finest
metal, and commonly procured it by way of Massilia from Britain. On one
occasion he himself went to that remote island in a friend's ship, and he
there met my mother. Her ruddy gold hair, which Pul has inherited, seems
to have bewitched him and, as the handsome foreigner pleased her well--
for men like my father are hard to match nowadays--she turned Christian
for his sake and came home with him. They neither of them ever regretted
it; for though she was a quiet woman, and to her dying day spoke Greek
like a foreigner, the old man often said she was his best counsellor.
At the same time she was so soft-hearted, that she could not bear that
any living creature should suffer, and though she looked keenly after
everything at the hearth and loom, she could never see a fowl, a goose,
or a pig slaughtered. And I have inherited her weakness--shall I say
'alas!' or 'thank God?'

"I had two elder brothers who both had to help my father, and who were to
carry on the business. When I was ten years old my calling was decided
on. My mother would have liked to make a priest of me and at that time I
should have consented joyfully; but my father would not agree, and as we