broke? It was foolish of you, indeed, to be out on the lake, when anyone could see that this gale was coming."

"I was rowing down, and did not notice it until I turned," John replied. "I was making for the shore, when the gale struck her."

"It was well, for you, that I noticed you. I was, myself, thinking of making for the shore although, in so large and well-manned craft as this, there is little fear upon the lake. It is not like the Great Sea; where I, myself, have seen a large ship as helpless, before the waves, as that small boat we picked you from.

"I had just set out from Tiberias, when I marked the storm coming up; but my business was urgent and, moreover, I marked your little boat, and saw that you were not likely to gain the shore; so I bade the helmsman keep his eye on you, until the darkness fell upon us; and then to follow straight in your wake, for you could but run before the wind--and well he did it for, when we first caught sight of you, you were right ahead of us."

The speaker was a man of about thirty years of age; tall, and with a certain air of command.

"I thank you, indeed, sir," John said, "for saving my life; and that of my cousin Mary, the daughter of my father's brother. Truly, my father and mother will be grateful to you, for having saved us; for I am their only son.

"Whom are they to thank for our rescue?"

"I am Joseph, the son of Matthias, to whom the Jews have intrusted the governorship of this province."

"Josephus!" John exclaimed, in a tone of surprise and reverence.

"So men call me," Josephus replied, with a smile.

It was, indeed, the governor. Flavius Josephus, as the Romans afterwards called him, came of a noble Jewish family--his father, Matthias, belonging to the highest of the twenty-four classes into which the sacerdotal families were divided. Matthias was eminent for his attainments, and piety; and had been one of the leading men in Jerusalem. From his youth, Josephus had carefully prepared himself for public life, mastering the doctrines of the three leading sects among the Jews--the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes--and having spent three years in the desert, with Banus the Ascetic. The fact that, at only twenty-six years of age, he had gone as the leader of a deputation to Rome, on behalf of 

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