s time if everlasting Love is not napping. Till we meet
again, best of good women!--And, if ill befalls your stupid old husband,
always remember that he brought it upon himself in trying to save a
quarter of a hundred innocent women from the worst misfortunes. At
any rate I shall fall on the road I myself have chosen.--But why has
Philippus not come to take leave of me?"

Dame Joanna burst into tears: "That-that is so hard too! What has
come over him that he has deserted us, and just now of all times? Ah,
husband! If you love me, take Gibbus with you on the voyage."

"Yes, master, take me," the hunchbacked gardener interposed. "The Nile
will be rising again by the time we come back, and till then the flowers
can die without my help. I dreamt last night that you picked a rose from
the middle of my Bump. It stuck up there like the knob on the lid of a
pot. There is some meaning in it and, if you leave me at home, what is
the good of the rose--that is to say what good will you get out of me?"

"Well then, carry your strange flower-bed on board," said the old man
laughing. "Now, are you satisfied Joanna?"

Once more he embraced her and Pulcheria and, as a tear from his wife's
eyes dropped on his hand, he whispered in her ear: "You have been the
rose of my life; and without you Eden--Paradise itself can have no
joys."

The boat pushed out into the middle of the stream and was soon hidden by
the darkness from the eyes of the women on the bank.

The convent bells were soon heard tolling after the fugitives: Paula and
Pulcheria were pulling them. There was not a breath of air; not enough
even to fill the small sail of the seaward-bound boat; but the rowers
pulled with all their might and the vessel glided northward. The captain
stood at the prow with his pole; sounding the current: his brother,
no less skilled, took the helm.--The shallowness of the water made
navigation very difficult, and those who knew the river best might
easily run aground on unexpected shoals or newly-formed mud-drifts. The
moon had scarcely risen when the boat was stranded at a short distance
below Fostat, and the men had to go overboard to push it off to an
accompaniment of loud singing which, as it were, welded their individual
wills and efforts into one. Thus it was floated off again; but such
delays were not unfrequent till they reached Letopolis, where the Nile
forks, and where they hoped to steal past the toll-takers unobserved.
Almost agains