ld not allow himself to be
interrupted, often as the abbess and the gardener entreated him to lay
aside the stylus. At last, with a deep sigh of relief, he closed the
tablets, handed them to the abbess, and said:

"There! Close it fast.--To Philippus the physician; into his own hand:
You hear, Gibbus?"

Here he fainted; but after they had bathed his forehead and wounds he
came to himself, and softly murmured: "I was dreaming of Joanna and the
poor child. They brought me a comic mask. What can that mean? That I
have been a fool all my life for thinking of other folks' troubles and
forgetting myself and my own family? No, no, no! As surely as man is the
standard of all things--if it were so, then, then folly would be truth
and right.--I, I--my desire--the aim to which my life was devoted...."

He paused; then he suddenly raised himself, looked up with a bright
light in his eyes, and cried aloud with joy: "O Thou, most merciful
Saviour! Yes, yes--I see it all now. I thank thee--All that I strove for
and lived for, Thou, my Redeemer who art Love itself--Ah how good, how
comforting to think of that!--It is for this that Thou grantest me to
die!"

Again he lost consciousness; his head grew very hot, his breath came
hoarsely and his parched lips, though frequently moistened by careful
hands, could only murmur the names of those he loved best, and among
them that of Paula.

At about five hours after noon he fell back on the hunchback's knees;
he had ceased to suffer. A happy smile lighted up his features, and in
death the old man's calm face looked like that of a child.

The gardener felt as though he had lost his own father, and his lively
tongue remained speechless till he entered Doormat with the rescued
sisters, and proceeded to carry out his master's last orders. The
abbess' ship took the wounded captain Setnau on board, with his wife,
his children, his brother the steersman, and the surviving ship-wrights.

At the very hour when Rufinus closed his eyes, the town-watch of
Memphis, led by Bishop Plotinus, appeared to claim the Melchite convent
of St. Cecilia, and all the possessions of the sisterhood, in the name
of the patriarch and the Jacobite church. Next morning the bishop set
out for Upper Egypt to make his report to the prelate.

CHAPTER IX.

Philippus started up from the divan on which he had been reclining at
breakfast with his old friend. Before Horapollo was a half-empty plate;
he had swallowed h