ished the young
Egyptian, as he awkwardly cut at his bonds with the knife.

He was free again! He crept softly away after pushing the knife's
handle back under the edge of the black tent. He felt that in the
secrecy of the tent one listened who knew he was free.

"Thou didst put it into her heart to save me!" whispered Timokles
with a reverent look at the sky.

He knew that as soon as his escape should be discovered there would
be instant pursuit, therefore he sought to travel as swiftly as
possible.

CHAPTER VI.

Athribis the slave bent lower--lower yet. What was this that he saw?
He was on the roof of the house in Alexandria. Through an open space
beside the wind-sail next to him, he could look into a small room
below.

In that room, his master Heraklas knelt and carefully drew a brick
from its place in the wall. Putting his hand into some hole that
seemed to be behind the bricks, Heraklas produced a roll of papyrus.
He glanced stealthily around, and, kneeling still, unrolled the
writing, and read in eager haste, one hand on the brick, ready at
the sound of any coming footsteps to thrust the papyrus quickly into
the wall again. It was a thing well pleasing to the treacherous soul
of Athribis that he should have discovered some secret of his
master.

"What is the writing, that he hideth it there?" the slave questioned
himself.

Heraklas continued to read. Stretched on his perch, and straining
his neck to look, Athribis deemed the time long. His prying eyes
noted carefully the distance of the loose brick from the floor.
Athribis did not recognize the papyrus as one that he had seen
before. The sight of any papyrus, however, had been distasteful to
him since the night of his adventure on the roof, but he thought the
papyri of that escapade safely burned long ago. He knew that
Heraklas' mother had ordered those destroyed that were found on the
roof. Athribis supposed the one also burnt that had fallen into the
court. What else should have become of it? No suspicion concerning
it had crossed his mind till now.

"Oh, that I could see what he readeth!" wished Athribis vainly.
"What meaneth that large sign? Is it the 'tau'?"

Heraklas farther unrolled the papyrus, and the mark of the cross
that had caught Athribis' eye and had interested him, vanished. The
mark seemed to the slave like the Egyptian "tau" or sign of life;
used afterwards, curiously enough, by the Christians of Europe as a
prefix to insc