d also enjoined the care of Myrtilus upon the slave, and he
was undoubtedly beside the sufferer's couch, supporting him in the same
way that he had often seen his master.

He was now riding across the open space, and he heard the men who carried
the Gaul talking close behind him.

Was the wounded barbarian the sole acquisition of this journey?

The beat of his horse's hoofs and the voices of the Biamites echoed
distinctly enough amid the stillness of the night, which was interrupted
only by the roaring of the wind. And this disturbance of the deep silence
around had entered the lighted windows before him, for a figure appeared
at one of them, and--could he believe his own eyes?--Myrtilus looked down
into the square, and a joyous welcome rang from his lips as loudly as in
his days of health.

The darkness of the night suddenly seemed to Hermon to be illumined. A
leap to the ground, two bounds up the steps leading to the house, an
eager rush through the corridor that separated him from the room in which
Myrtilus was, the bursting instead of opening of the door, and, as if
frantic with happy surprise, he impetuously embraced his friend, who,
burin and file in hand, was just approaching the threshold, and kissed
his brow and cheeks in the pure joy of his heart.

Then what questions, answers, tidings! In spite of the torrents of rain
and the gale, the invalid's health had been excellent. The solitude had
done him good. He knew nothing about the carrier dove. The hurricane had
probably "blown it away," as the breeders of the swift messengers said.

Question and reply now followed one another in rapid succession, and both
were soon acquainted with everything worth knowing; nay, Hermon had even
delivered Daphne's rose to his friend, and informed him what had befallen
the Gaul who was being brought into the house.

Bias and the other slaves had quickly appeared, and Hermon soon rendered
the wounded man the help he needed in an airy chamber in the second story
of the house, which, owing to the heat that prevailed in summer so close
under the roof, the slaves had never occupied.

Bias assisted his master with equal readiness and skill, and at last the
Gaul opened his eyes and, in the language of his country, asked a few
brief questions which were incomprehensible to the others. Then,
groaning, he again closed his lids.

Hitherto Hermon had not even allowed himself time to look around his
friend's studio and examine what h