firm inside this
one! He felt something! He narrowly scanned the Christians' papyrus,
as he hastily unrolled it. His lips were parted with eagerness, his
breath panted into the heart of the scroll, as he held his face down
that he might see. He unrolled the papyrus to the end. He sat up,
and drew a breath. His bare feet kicked viciously at the unrolled
papyrus. No treasure in that first scroll! He seized the second.
With eagerness all the greater because of his former disappointment,
he searched through this roll, his face bent down till his eyelashes
almost swept the surface of the writing. In vain! There was nothing!

"These Christians! What cheats they are!"

He snatched the third roll. With trembling fingers he unrolled this,
the last of the papyrus scrolls. There must be something hidden! It
could not be possible that he would be disappointed in the last
scroll! Was there no treasure? Not a thin wedge of gold at the heart
of this papyrus? Not a jewel, not anything that savored of riches?

Athribis' shaking fingers unrolled the papyrus to its very end.
Nothing but the continuous writing, and the stick on which the
scroll had been rolled! His limp hand let fall the end of the
papyrus. It descended upon the heap at his feet. Had he dared, he
would have cried aloud in his disappointment.

But it was not his voice that pierced the night. Some one had seen
him!

"A robber!" cried a woman's tones. "A thief! On the roof!"

Athribis leaped to his feet. He caught the papyri. Alas, alas! they
were not rolled, now! The wind tossed the long streamers, and as
Athribis in fearful haste snatched them, the breeze blew one scroll
entirely free. It, swept from the roof, and, descending into the
court, hung in a long strip from one of the palms.

The dismayed Athribis cast the other papyri on the roof, and fled.
It was time. The house was being aroused by the cry of the woman.
With his bare, silent feet, Athribis sped through the shadows of the
corridors to what he thought a secret spot, and hid himself. The
house resounded with outcries. Feet ran hither and thither.

Out in the court, hanging all unseen from a palm-tree, swayed the
papyrus, the written copy of part of the Sacred Book of the
Christians!

CHAPTER II.

It was night on the Libyan desert. The stars glittered on the rocky
highlands that compose so much of that desert, and lit faintly, too,
the areas between, where stretches of sand waited to be shifted