Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/298

 reward, but givest to the poor what thou hast. For if thou wouldst receive a reward, I should have sent thee a sufficient sum of money and I had not come myself, since the king does nothing without me. For my possession is great and I am rich, one of the wealthy in India. But I never did anything wrong to anyone. But the reverse I have experienced. I have a wife and I had a daughter by her, and I love her (the wife) very much, as nature demands it, and I had no intercourse with another woman. And it happened that there was a wedding in our city, and those which made the wedding were good friends of mine. So they came and asked me (my consent) by inviting my wife and daughter. Being well befriended, I could not refuse it. So I sent her, though she did not care, and I sent also many slaves with them. So they went away, decked with much jewelry, she and her daughter.

63. And when it was evening, and the time had come to come home from the wedding, I sent lamps and torches for to meet them, and I stood by, looking out when they came, and I could see her and my daughter. And as I stood, I heard a lamentation. Woe to her! was heard from every mouth. And the slaves returned with torn garments and told me what had happened. We saw, said they, a man and a boy with him; the man had his hand upon thy wife, the boy upon thy daughter. But they ran away from them. And we wounded them with swords, but the swords fell to the ground and they (the women) also, gnashing with their teeth and