ty, above the swaying golden waves of the ripening
grain fields and bestowing peace beside the domestic hearth. The whole
world once more seemed peopled with deities, and he felt their rule in
his own breast.

The place of which Bias had told him was situated on a lofty portion of
the shore. Beside the springs which there gushed from the soil of the
desert grew green palm trees and thorny acacias. Farther on flourished
the fragrant betharan. About a thousand paces from this spot the
faithful freedman pitched the little tent obtained in Tennis under the
shade of several tall palm trees and a sejal acacia.

Not far from the springs lived the same family of Amalekites whom Bias
had known from boyhood. They raised a few vegetables in little beds, and
the men acted as guards to the caravans which came from Egypt through
the peninsula of Sinai to Petrea and Hebron. The daughter of the aged
sheik whose men accompanied the trains of goods, a pleasant, middle-aged
woman, recognised the Biamite, who when a boy had recovered under her
mother's nursing, and promised Bias to honour his blind master as a
valued guest of the tribe.

Not until after he had done everything in his power to render life in
the wilderness endurable, and had placed a fresh bandage over his eyes,
would Bias leave his master.

The freedman entered the boat weeping, and Hermon, deeply agitated,
turned his face toward him.

When he was left alone with his Egyptian slave, with whom he rarely
exchanged a word, he fancied that, amid the murmur of the waves washing
the strand at his feet, blended the sounds of the street which led
past his house in Alexandria, and with them all sorts of disagreeable
memories crowded upon him; but soon he no longer heard them, and the
next night brought refreshing sleep.

Even on the second day he felt that the profound silence which
surrounded him was a benefit. The stillness affected him like something
physical.

The life was certainly monotonous, and at first there were hours when
the course of the new existence, so devoid of any change, op pressed
him, but he experienced no tedium. His mental life was too rich, and the
unburdening of his anxious soul too great a relief for that.

He had shunned serious thought since he left the philosopher's school;
but here it soon afforded him the highest pleasure, for never had his
mind moved so freely, so undisturbed by any limit or obstacle.

He did not need to search for what he