l find your labors bitter
to-day. This man's master, my dear brethren, sold both his daughters
yesterday to a dealer from Smyrna; but if you never see them again in
Egypt, or in any other country, my friend, you will meet them in the
home of your Heavenly Father--of that you may rest assured. Our life
on earth is but a pilgrimage, and Heaven is the goal, and the Guide who
teaches us never to miss the way, is our Saviour. Weariness and toil,
sorrow and suffering are easy to bear, to him who knows that when
the solemn hour is near, the King of Kings shall throw open his
dwelling-place, and invite him to enter as a favored guest to inhabit
there, where all we have loved have found joy and rest."

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh
you," said a man's loud voice again from the circle that sat round the
old man. The old man stood up, signed to a boy who distributed the bread
in equal shares to the workmen, and took up a jar with handles, out of
which he filled a large wooden cup with wine.

Not a word of this discourse had escaped Mastor, and the often repeated
verse, "Come unto me all ye that labor," dwelt in his mind like the
invitation of a hospitable friend bidding him to happy days of freedom
and enjoyment. A distant gleam shone through the weight of his troubles,
seeming to promise the dawn of a new day, and he reverently went up to
the old man, in the first place to ask him if he was the overseer of the
workmen who stood round him.

"I am," replied the old man, and as soon as he learnt what Mastor
required as a commission from the controlling architect, he pointed out
some young slaves who quickly brought the water that he needed.

Pontius met the Emperor's servant and his water-carriers and remarked,
loudly enough for Mastor to understand him, to Pollux who was with him:

"The architect's servant is getting Christians to wait upon his master
to-day. They are regular and sober workmen who do their duty silently
and well."

While Mastor was giving his master towels, and helping to dry and dress
him, he was far less attentive than usual, for he could not get the
words he had heard from the overseer's lips out of his mind. He had not
understood them all, but he had fully comprehended that there was a kind
and loving God who had suffered in his own person the utmost torments,
who was especially gracious to the poor, the miserable, and the
bondsman, and who promised to refresh them