ied
the doors again. Once he called out; the room echoed so that he was
startled. With such calmness as he could assume, he made up his mind
to wait a time before attempting to break a way out.

In such a situation the mind has its ebb and flow of disquiet,
with intervals of peace between. At length--how long, though,
he could not have said--he came to the conclusion that the affair
was an accident or mistake. The palace certainly belonged to somebody;
it must have care and keeping: and the keeper would come; the evening
or the night would bring him. Patience!

So concluding, he waited.

Half an hour passed--a much longer period to Ben-Hur--when the door
which had admitted him opened and closed noiselessly as before,
and without attracting his attention.

The moment of the occurrence he was sitting at the farther end of
the room. A footstep startled him.

"At last she has come!" he thought, with a throb of relief and
pleasure, and arose.

The step was heavy, and accompanied with the gride and clang of
coarse sandals. The gilded pillars were between him and the door;
he advanced quietly, and leaned against one of them. Presently he
heard voices--the voices of men--one of them rough and guttural.
What was said he could not understand, as the language was not of
the East or South of Europe.

After a general survey of the room, the strangers crossed to their
left, and were brought into Ben-Hur's view--two men, one very stout,
both tall, and both in short tunics. They had not the air of masters
of the house or domestics. Everything they saw appeared wonderful to
them; everything they stopped to examine they touched. They were
vulgarians. The atrium seemed profaned by their presence. At the
same time, their leisurely manner and the assurance with which
they proceeded pointed to some right or business; if business,
with whom?

With much jargon they sauntered this way and that, all the time
gradually approaching the pillar by which Ben-Hur was standing.
Off a little way, where a slanted gleam of the sun fell with a
glare upon the mosaic of the floor, there was a statue which
attracted their notice. In examining it, they stopped in the
light.

The mystery surrounding his own presence in the palace tended,
as we have seen, to make Ben-Hur nervous; so now, when in the
tall stout stranger he recognized the Northman whom he had known
in Rome, and seen crowned only the day before in the Circus as
the winning pugilist;