senate; but he felt convinced, for his part, that the Olympians would
never count him as one of themselves. At the same time he was
philosopher enough to understand that no existing thing could ever cease
to exist. The restoration of each part of his body to that portion of
the universe to which it was akin, pleased his fancy. There was no place
in the Indian's creed for the responsibility of the soul at the judgment
of the dead. Caesar was already on the point of asking the slave to
reveal his secret, when Adventus prevented him by exclaiming:

"You may confide to me what will be left of me--unless, indeed, you mean
the worms which shall eat me and so proceed from me. It can not be good
for much, at any rate, and I will tell no one."

To this Arjuna solemnly replied: "There is one thing which persists to
all eternity and can never be lost in all the ages of the universe, and
that is--the deed."

"I know that," replied the old man with an indifferent shrug; but the
word struck Caesar like a thunder-bolt. He listened breathlessly to hear
what more the Indian might say; but Arjuna, who regarded it as sacrilege
to waste the highest lore on one unworthy of it, went on reading to
himself, and Adventus stretched himself out to sleep.

All was silent in and about the sleeping-room, and the fearful words,
"the deed," still rang in the ears of the man who had just committed the
most monstrous of all atrocities. He could not get rid of the haunting
words; all the ill he had done from his childhood returned to him in
fancy, and seemed heaped up to form a mountain which weighed on him like
an incubus.