The sound died away. Timokles lay listening for a long time. Once he thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind.

Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-pouch he carried.

The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles, and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home--his mother, the brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.

"O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst thou see, when thou visitedst Egypt five years ago, that thou shouldest decree such evil against the Egyptian Christians now?"

Softly Timokles went his way in the dark. He was hungry, yet he dared eat little of the dried dates he had with him. When would he find other food?

For a time he looked warily around, but soon his sense of loneliness overcame his fear, and he watched more for some sign of his four friends than for an indication of an enemy.

"Perhaps some Christian hath escaped, even as I have," thought Timokles.

He started.

Outstretched before him lay a figure of a man! Timokles stood motionless, till he perceived the man be to be asleep. Then the lad bent over the sleeper to scan his face. But, as Timokles stooped, he dimly saw, in the relaxed, open palm of the man's hand, a small stone of the triangular form under which the Egyptians were wont to worship Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Such are the stones found in the tombs of the Egyptians.

This was no Christian sleeper that lay at Timokles' feet! The lad turned and fled into the distance.

Through the desert there wailed a thin, plaintive cry. It was the voice of a night-wandering jackal.

Timokles was dizzy to faintness, and staggered as he was driven on.

He had been discovered and taken. His life had been spared that he might henceforth be a slave.

"I bear this for thy sake, O Lord, dear Lord!" murmured the exhausted lad, as the blows drove him through the pathless desert.

Again came the plaintive cry of the wandering jackal.

"For thy sake!" faintly repeated Timokles.

A few minutes pa.s.sed, and once more the jackal's inarticulate voice wailed through the desert, but Timokles had fallen, helpless. A man sprang forward, and the lash fell again and again on Timokles'

prostrate body, but the boy did not stir.

"Now see how the Christian would die in the desert, and cheat us of all the work he might do!" grumbled the vexed voice of a dismounted camel-rider. "He is young. There are many years of work in him!"

"Leave him!" scornfully advised another, who held a torch. "Some beast will find him."

"Nay, but he shall go with me to Carthage," a.s.serted a third, from the height of his camel's back. "Carthage knoweth what to do with Christians!"

"Who art thou that thou shouldest own the Christian?" demanded the first, angrily gazing up at the presumptuous rider. "Did I not find him?"

The mounted camel-rider laughed, and tossed something toward the irate speaker. The man caught the object, a ring of gold, containing a scarabaeus.

"Take it," said the giver to the appeased rival. "The Christian is mine."

The unconscious Timokles was taken up at a sign from the camel-rider to one of his servants, and the cavalcade proceeded on its way. As his camel paced forward, Pentaur, the purchaser, glanced back twice or thrice.

"Truly," he a.s.sured himself with much complacency, as he perceived Timokles being carried, "I follow the maxim of Ptah-hotep: 'Treat well thy people, as it behooveth thee; this is the duty of those whom the G.o.ds favor.'"

As Pentaur, for that moment, thought of the dread hour when, after death, according to Egyptian belief, he should stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris, the camel-rider felt convinced that he would have merl which might stand him in good stead in that ordeal.

Little by little, Timokles regained consciousness. He marveled to find himself carried. He had expected to be killed where he fell.

The many painful welts of the lash's stripes stung him with keen pain.

"O mother! mother!" Timokles' heart cried silently.

Had she indeed lost all love for him, since she had told him she wished he had died rather than become a Christian?

"Lord Christ," cried Timokles' breaking heart now, "I have left all for thee!"

The company pushed on rapidly. At length, after morning with its heat had come, the party halted, and the slave who had carried Timokles flung him on the sand, the slave comforting himself that possibly the evil of the Christian's touch might be warded off by a symbolic eye of Horus that the pagan wore tied to his arm by a slender string. Such eyes were often used by Egyptians as amulets and ornaments.

When the hot hours of the day were past, the caravan again made, ready to go on. The merchant, Pentaur, summoned Timokles, and with condescending good-nature, demanded his history. Timokles told it.

"Why shouldest thou be a Christian?" commented Pentaur. "See, we come to-night to Ammonium the oasis. Every camel-step doth lead thee farther toward Carthage! Thou wilt perish there! Carthage doth hate Christians!"

Timokles looked into Pentaur's eyes.

"Yea, I know that Carthage hateth them," the lad answered. "I heard that four years ago, when the proconsul Saturninus persecuted the Christians; and when a number were brought from the little town of Scillita to Carthage to appear before the tribunal of Saturnin, one man called Speratus spoke frankly and n.o.bly for his brethren. When the proconsul Saturninus invited Speratus to swear by the genius of the emperor, the proconsul promising the Christians mercy if they would do this and return to the worship of the G.o.ds, Speratus answered, 'I know of no genius of the ruler of this earth, but I serve my G.o.d who is in heaven, whom no man hath seen nor can see. I render what is due from me, for I acknowledge the emperor as my sovereign; but I can worship none but my Lord, the King of all kings and Ruler of all nations.' So were the Christians taken to the place of execution, where they knelt and prayed, and were then beheaded."

Timokles' eyes fell. His voice trembled.

"O Lord Christ," he added, reverently, "I also would be faithful unto thee!"

The merchant's piercing look regarded Timokles for a few minutes.

"There were women among those twelve Christians who were brought from Scillita to Carthage to die," continued Timokles, "three women, called Donata, Secunda, and Vestina. When they were brought before the proconsul, he said to them, 'Honor our prince, and offer sacrifice to the G.o.ds.' Donata answered, 'We give to Caesar the honor that is due Caesar: but we adore and offer sacrifice to G.o.d alone.' Vestina, said, 'I also am a Christian.' Secunda said, 'I also believe in my G.o.d, and will continue faithful to him. As for thy G.o.ds, we will neither serve nor adore them.'

"O my master," continued Timokles, with trembling voice, "thinkest thou not that the G.o.d who so strengthened three women that they did not shrink from death for his sake, could strengthen me to meet death, also?"

CHAPTER III.

Pentaur looked fixedly at the lad, who stood with no air of bravado about him, but with an expression of humble trust that the merchant could not fathom.

"Why shouldest thou risk death?" questioned the merchant. "Death will defeat a Christian."

"Nay, O master!" exclaimed Timokles eagerly. "Death may be glorious victory!"

Pentaur smiled.

"Oh!" broke forth Timokles earnestly, "I know a death that was a glorious victory! Carthage knew of it! Didst thou not hear what was done last year at Carthage? Didst thou not know of the Christian lady, Vivia Perpetua, and the Christian slave, Felicitas?"

A shudder ran through Pentaur, as Timokles continued:

"Thinkest thou that what they suffered was nothing? Vivia Perpetua was the best loved of a heathen father's children. How she suffered in her heart, when her old father came to the prison and besought her to give up Christ! 'Daughter,' begged the old man, 'have pity on my gray hairs. Have compa.s.sion on thy father!' He wept at her feet.