aling from me?"

"What could you do to offend me?" he replied; "life is full of sorrows,
my child. You must learn to have patience."

"Patience!" echoed Melissa, sadly. "That is the only knowledge I have
ever mastered. When my father is more sullen than you are, for a week at
a time, I scarcely heed it. But when you look like that, Andreas, it is
not without cause, and that is why I am anxious."

"One we love is very sick, child," he said, soothingly; but she was not
to be put off so, and exclaimed with conviction:

"No, no, it is not that. We have learned nothing fresh about Diodoro--and
you were ready enough to answer me when we came away from the Christian's
house. Nothing but good has happened to us since, and yet you look as if
the locusts had come down on your garden."

They had reached a spot on the shore where a ship was being unloaded of
its cargo of granite blocks from Syene. Black and brown slaves were
dragging them to land. An old blind man was piping a dismal tune on a
small reed flute to encourage them in their work, while two men of fairer
hue, whose burden had been too heavy for them, had let the end of the
column they were carrying sink on the ground, and were being mercilessly
flogged by the overseer to make them once more attempt the impossible.

Andreas had watched the scene; a surge of fury had brought the blood to
his face, and, stirred by great and genuine emotion, he broke out:

"There--there you see the locusts which destroy my garden--the hail which
ruins my crops! It falls on all that bears the name of humanity--on me
and you. Happy, girl? None of us can ever be happy till the Kingdom shall
arise for which the fullness of the time is come."

"But they dropped the column; I saw them myself," urged Melissa.

"Did you, indeed?" said Andreas. "Well, well, the whip, no doubt, can
revive exhausted powers. And that is how you look upon such deeds!--you,
who would not crush a worm in the garden, think this is right and just!"

It suddenly struck Melissa that Andreas, too, had once been a slave, and
the feeling that she had hurt him grieved her to the heart. She had often
heard him speak sternly and gravely, but never in scorn as he did now,
and that, too, distressed her; and as she could not think of the right
thing to say in atonement for the wrong she had done, she could only look
up with tearful entreaty and murmur, "Forgive me!"

"I have nothing to forgive," he replied in an altered tone