oward the
irate speaker. The man caught the object, a ring of gold, containing
a scarabaeus.

"Take it," said the giver to the appeased rival. "The Christian is
mine."

The unconscious Timokles was taken up at a sign from the camel-rider
to one of his servants, and the cavalcade proceeded on its way. As
his camel paced forward, Pentaur, the purchaser, glanced back twice
or thrice.

"Truly," he assured himself with much complacency, as he perceived
Timokles being carried, "I follow the maxim of Ptah-hotep: 'Treat
well thy people, as it behooveth thee; this is the duty of those
whom the gods favor.'"

As Pentaur, for that moment, thought of the dread hour when, after
death, according to Egyptian belief, he should stand before the
judgment-seat of Osiris, the camel-rider felt convinced that he
would have merl which might stand him in good stead in that ordeal.

Little by little, Timokles regained consciousness. He marveled to
find himself carried. He had expected to be killed where he fell.
The many painful welts of the lash's stripes stung him with keen
pain.

"O mother! mother!" Timokles' heart cried silently.

Had she indeed lost all love for him, since she had told him she
wished he had died rather than become a Christian?

"Lord Christ," cried Timokles' breaking heart now, "I have left all
for thee!"

The company pushed on rapidly. At length, after morning with its
heat had come, the party halted, and the slave who had carried
Timokles flung him on the sand, the slave comforting himself that
possibly the evil of the Christian's touch might be warded off by a
symbolic eye of Horus that the pagan wore tied to his arm by a
slender string. Such eyes were often used by Egyptians as amulets
and ornaments.

When the hot hours of the day were past, the caravan again made,
ready to go on. The merchant, Pentaur, summoned Timokles, and with
condescending good-nature, demanded his history. Timokles told it.

"Why shouldest thou be a Christian?" commented Pentaur. "See, we
come to-night to Ammonium the oasis. Every camel-step doth lead thee
farther toward Carthage! Thou wilt perish there! Carthage doth hate
Christians!"

Timokles looked into Pentaur's eyes.

"Yea, I know that Carthage hateth them," the lad answered. "I heard
that four years ago, when the proconsul Saturninus persecuted the
Christians; and when a number were brought from the little town of
Scillita to Carthage to appear before the tribunal of Sa