Part 6 (1/2)

Again within the tent he conjectured there might be a faint stir.

”My enemy cometh!” he thought.

But there was silence. Timokles waited, yet there came no sound.

Remembrances of what he had heard concerning former martyrs crowded upon him. He thought of Pothinus, the ninety-years-old bishop of Lyons, who, in answer to the legate's question, ”Who is the G.o.d of the Christians?” boldly answered, ”If thou art worthy, thou shalt know,” and was tortured so severely that he died in prison. Timokles remembered hearing of Ponticus, the boy who, in the same persecution, bore all the tortures unflinchingly, though he was but fifteen years old. And Blandina, the maiden, who, tortured, bleeding, mangled, still persisted in her declaration, ”I am a Christian! Among us no wickedness is committed,” came to Timokles'

mind. His thoughts turned to the martyr Christians of four years ago at Carthage, and he remembered the words of one of those Christians: ”We will die joyfully for Christ our Lord.”

Timokles prayed long and fervently. His heart went back to his beloved Alexandrian home. Heaven would be sweet, but would his dear ones ever know the only way there? Would they ever accept Jesus Christ as their Savior?

”O Lord, help Heraklas to know thee!” prayed Timokles with dropping tears.

Nothing did Timokles know of the roll of the Book of the Christians, the papyrus that had swung from the palm tree in the court at home!

Something made him turn his head. He started, for he saw, stretched out toward him from beneath the black tent, an arm. No more was visible. The black tent descended to the very ground. Looking more closely, he discerned in the hand a knife. For an instant, Timokles thought his enemy was upon him. But it was a small hand, and it was the handle of the knife, not its blade, that was offered to him!

Timokles stretched out his one free hand, and took the knife. The arm disappeared beneath the black tent so swiftly and so noiselessly that Timokles would almost have thought that the sight of the arm had been an illusion had he not held the knife in his left hand. He remembered the girl's words, ”O Christian, I am afraid of thy G.o.d and thee!”

”Would that I might have told her more of Him!” wished the young Egyptian, as he awkwardly cut at his bonds with the knife.

He was free again! He crept softly away after pus.h.i.+ng the knife's handle back under the edge of the black tent. He felt that in the secrecy of the tent one listened who knew he was free.

”Thou didst put it into her heart to save me!” whispered Timokles with a reverent look at the sky.

He knew that as soon as his escape should be discovered there would be instant pursuit, therefore he sought to travel as swiftly as possible.

CHAPTER VI.

Athribis the slave bent lower--lower yet. What was this that he saw?

He was on the roof of the house in Alexandria. Through an open s.p.a.ce beside the wind-sail next to him, he could look into a small room below.

In that room, his master Heraklas knelt and carefully drew a brick from its place in the wall. Putting his hand into some hole that seemed to be behind the bricks, Heraklas produced a roll of papyrus.

He glanced stealthily around, and, kneeling still, unrolled the writing, and read in eager haste, one hand on the brick, ready at the sound of any coming footsteps to thrust the papyrus quickly into the wall again. It was a thing well pleasing to the treacherous soul of Athribis that he should have discovered some secret of his master.

”What is the writing, that he hideth it there?” the slave questioned himself.

Heraklas continued to read. Stretched on his perch, and straining his neck to look, Athribis deemed the time long. His prying eyes noted carefully the distance of the loose brick from the floor.

Athribis did not recognize the papyrus as one that he had seen before. The sight of any papyrus, however, had been distasteful to him since the night of his adventure on the roof, but he thought the papyri of that escapade safely burned long ago. He knew that Heraklas' mother had ordered those destroyed that were found on the roof. Athribis supposed the one also burnt that had fallen into the court. What else should have become of it? No suspicion concerning it had crossed his mind till now.

”Oh, that I could see what he readeth!” wished Athribis vainly.

”What meaneth that large sign? Is it the 'tau'?”

Heraklas farther unrolled the papyrus, and the mark of the cross that had caught Athribis' eye and had interested him, vanished. The mark seemed to the slave like the Egyptian ”tau” or sign of life; used afterwards, curiously enough, by the Christians of Europe as a prefix to inscriptions. Numbers of inscriptions headed by the tau have remained even to the present time, in early Christian sepulchres in the Great Oasis.

”If that were the tau, there may be no harm in the writing,” thought Athribis sullenly. ”Yet why hideth he here?”

The supposed sign of the tau rolled in sight again, as Heraklas s.h.i.+fted the papyrus.