pray no more to idols! Lo, I tell you of the true God!"

He hardly knew whether she understood or not. She gazed at him as if
half comprehending his words, and then the fact of his having
returned from the House of the Leopard seemed to overwhelm every
other thought, and she murmured, "O Christian, I am afraid of thy
God and thee!"

She fled back to the black tent. Timokles' bound hands made but
awkward work of eating. He could hear the voices of the mother and
the daughter talking in the mother's tongue, but what they said he
knew not. Would the father or the son learn something about their
captive?

The voices hushed within the tent. The hours of sleep came on.

The night had grown black. There were footsteps audible.

"They have come back!" thought Timokles.

The father and the son had returned, and with them came another man.
Timokles heard and understood something of what was said at the
tent's door in the dark.

"If I may but see his face, I shall know whether he hath been here
before," declared the new voice eagerly. "I have seen all who have
come to our village."

"Thou shalt see him in the morning," impatiently answered the maker
of the hippopotamus. "Knowest thou not that on this day I cannot
make a flame by which thou shouldest see? It is the eleventh day of
Tybi, concerning which it is commanded by the priests of Egypt,
'Approach not any flame on this day; Ra is there for the purpose of
destroying the wicked.'"

"I fear no flame!" muttered the new voice discontentedly. "Let me
but see the stranger!"

"There shall no flame be kindled!" burst out in wrath the
superstitious father. "Bide thou till morning! Then shalt thou see
the branded one."

Silence followed. The discontented villager did not dare say more.
After a short time, the quietness of slumber seemed to envelop the
black tent.

Concealed by the dark, Timokles endeavored with his teeth to loosen
the bonds of his wrists. After prolonged attempts, he undid one
knot, and by successive wearisome trials he at length entirely
released his left hand.

Timokles was near the black tent. It seemed to him that he heard the
faintest stir within. But a long silence followed, and he thought he
had been mistaken.

Timokles tugged at the thongs of his right hand. His arm was lame
from the leopard's claws, and he could not reach the knots that held
him. He struggled mightily, till at last he lay exhausted, no nearer
free than before.

"I cannot