"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.
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