few steps, then he turned his
head with a dissatisfied air, muttered a few unintelligible words into
his beard, turned round and hastily retraced his steps to the narrow way,
down which he went towards the valley. His young companion followed him
without raising his head or interrupting his reverie, as if he were his
shadow, but the slave lifted his cropped fair head and a stolen smile
crossed his lips as on the left hand side of the Kasius road he caught
sight of a black kid, and close beside it an old woman who, at the
approach of the three men covered her wrinkled face in alarm with her
dark blue veil.

"That is the reason then!" said the slave to himself with a nod, and
blowing a kiss into the air to a black-haired girl who crouched at the
old woman's feet. But she, for whom the greeting was intended, did not
observe this mute courtship, for her eyes followed the travellers, and
especially the young man, as if spellbound. As soon as the three were far
enough off not to hear her, the girl asked with a shiver, as if some
desert-spectre had passed by-and in a low voice "Grandmother, who was
that?"

The old woman raised her veil, laid her hand on her grandchild's mouth,
and whispered:

"It was he."

"The Emperor?"

The old woman answered with a significant nod, but the girl squeezed
herself up, against her grandmother, with vehement curiosity stretching
out her dusky head to see better, and asked softly: "The young one?"

"Silly child! the one in front with a grey beard."

"He? Oh, I wish the young one was the Emperor!"

It was in fact Hadrian, the Roman Emperor, who walked on in silence
before his escort, and it seemed as though his advent had given life to
the desert, for as he approached the reed-swamp, the kites flew up in the
air, and from behind a sand-hill on the edge of the broader road which
Hadrian had avoided, came two men in priestly robes. They both belonged
to the temple of Baal of Kariotis, a small structure of solid stone,
which faced the sea, and which the Emperor had yesterday visited.

"Do you think he has lost his way?" said one to the other, in the
Phoenician tongue.

"Hardly," was the answer. "Master said that he could always find a road
again by which he had once gone, even in the dark."

"And yet he is gazing more at the clouds than at the road."

"Still, he promised us yesterday."

"He promised nothing for certain," interrupted the other.

"Indeed he did; at parting he called o