ng over the stones. He fell heavily, and in
that instant's time, Timokles darted forward behind one of the
rocks, and, creeping underneath it, lay breathless in the darkness.

The man struggled to his feet. Up past the other side of the rock
rushed the pursuer. Timokles, quaking, expected every instant to be
discovered.

"Where art thou?" savagely called the man. "Where?"

He ran hither and thither with fiercely muttered imprecations. Now
his footsteps sounded farther off, and now again he ran back and
came softly stealing around among the rocks. Timokles laid his
branded cheek against the gravel, and waited.

The footsteps went, and came, and went again in the dark. Timokles
trembled from head to foot. He did not fear death, but he dreaded
capture and unknown terrors.

The dark form passed by again. A chill went over Timokles, as he
thought he saw a weapon in the man's hand.

The footsteps became inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long
time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift
his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out
into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand
above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the darkness
above the boy, descended and rested an instant on the gravel next
him--but did not touch him. The silent menace of the groping hand
was terrible. Timokles held his breath.

The hand passed on, feeling of other rocks.

"O God of thy people, thou hast hidden me!" cried Timokles in his
heart, as he heard the soft rubbing of his enemy's hand against the
farther rocks.

The sound died away. Timokles lay listening for a long time. Once he
thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind.

Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared
not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his
lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin
water-pouch he carried.

The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming
suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles,
and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward
the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home--his mother, the
brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little
sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a
toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.

"O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst