not before this feared unconsciousness. Now he began to
feel that he must reach the roof. His faintness might prevent him
from clinging to the palm branch much longer.

With Timokles' first motion the leopard was alert again. Timokles
climbed cautiously. He was nearing the roof. There was a cracking
sound, such as he had heard, before. The leopard moved vehemently.
Suddenly the branch cracked so that it swung Timokles against the
wall. The leopard's movement sounded like a leap.

Timokles was sure that the branch was giving way. He was nearly to
the roof. He clutched at it. The mud-covered, rotten mat that he
grasped broke through his fingers, and the dust descended into his
face. He grasped again, with the same result. The branch was
momentarily growing looser. The leopard was ready.

Timokles grasped again--again--again! The rotten mats and the mud
with which they had been plastered came away in great handfuls. He
could hardly see, for the descending dust. He grasped blindly,
desperately. He felt something firm! It was another palm branch that
his fingers reached as he dug through the mud. He held on with the
clutch of despair.

His head just reached a hole in the roof. He missed his grasp, and
fell back on the swinging, broken palm branch. With one final,
cracking sound it parted! Timokles' one hand grasped the top of the
wall; his other hand reached the outer part of the roof. He heard
the old palm branch fall, and the leopard spring to meet it.

Dragging himself upward, panting with exhaustion, Timokles succeeded
in mounting through the hole to the outside of the roof. His foot
plunged through a mat. He recovered himself, and crawling to a
little distance from the hole, he lay down on the roof. The sun was
high in the heavens, but all the world became black to Timokles.

He lay there, faint, for hours. When he could look up at last, the
sun was descending toward the west. Far overhead sailed the sacred
hawk of Egypt, and the bird's piercing cry, full of melancholy,
reached Timokles' ears. The shadow of a palm tree stretched outward
and touched him.

"Oh, God!" whispered Timokles reverently, "Thou west Daniel's God.
Thou art mine!"

Night had fallen. Timokles, lying in the dark, heard a sound beside
the building. Some one was coming!

Timokles crept to the roof's edge farthest from the sound, and lay
down.

The head of a man appeared above the roof's level. Evidently he was
not accustomed to the roof,