to fill the space before him. Alarmed, he strove to overcome this faintness. He knew his arm had been bleeding a little, but he had 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, for he was very cautious in his movements, and tested every step he took. He carefully approached one of the holes of the roof, and, kneeling, put his face down to the aperture.

The man spoke, and, by his tones, Timokles recognized Pentaur the merchant.

"Oh, Christian!" cried Pentaur into the depth of the building, "livest thou? Ill shall I fare at the judgment of Osiris for this day's deed!"

There was silence.

Perhaps, from the darkness of the room below, Pentaur could see the shining of the brute's eyes, or hear his uneasy stepping to and fro. Something sent a shudder of horror through the man.

"I have taken pleasure in righteousness," he protested. "I have heretofore done no injury to men who honored their gods. Oh, Osiris, I have been righteous!"

There was an awful horror in the man's voice. Timokles was moved with compassion for his former owner, and yet the lad kept silent.

"Shall I speak to him?" Timokles questioned himself. "If he shall be beset in some other place by those who hate Christians, will he not abandon me again to my enemies?"

The merchant waited a moment longer.

"Oh, Osiris!" then he wailed again, "I have been righteous! He was only a Christian!"

The merchant sprang up, and sped toward the edge of the roof where he had first appeared. His foot plunged to its ankle through a weak place in the mats. He shrieked aloud at the fear of falling through into the room below. Hurrying forward, he disappeared down the side of the building. Timokles heard the man running among the fallen stones. The footsteps grew faint, and ceased to be audible.

Timokles drew a breath of thankfulness. He crept and felt in the dark for a few, scattered dates that he had before noticed lying near the roof's edge, the fruit having fallen from a date palm and having lain there till nearly as dry as shards. But there was still nutriment left in the dates, and, having eaten nothing since morning, he gnawed the fruit.

He could not descend by the date palm's trunk, for that was too far from the roof to be reached by him. The palm's straight trunk shot up twenty cubits above the roof's level, and, after the manner of the date palm's growth, bore no branches, such as the doum palm has.

"How did Pentaur climb?" thought Timokles.

The lad passed to the other edge, where the merchant had disappeared. Here, a little lower as yet than the roof, he found a group of young doum palms, the branching stems of which variety of trees he had noticed here and there in forest-like clumps throughout the oasis. Timokles found no difficulty in descending with the doum palms' help, and he reflected that perhaps food for the leopard was often brought up this way, and thrown to the creature through the roof's holes. No one had come to-day with food, because the Christian had been sent to keep the leopard company!

The village, some distance away, was quiet. Scarcely had he gone a score of steps before he saw a star reflected in a spring at his feet. Timokles dropped upon his knees, and with thankfulness drank of the refreshing water. How he had longed for some, as he had lain on the roof under the parching sun this day! He bathed his scratched arm, which had ceased to bleed but still felt very sore.

Carefully Timokles crept over the fallen remnants of the old building. Then he turned from the direction in which the village lay, and set his face toward the northern limestone hills.

He was concealed among them when the sun rose. It would be folly for him to venture out alone upon the desert without food, even if he had water in his small skin bottle. As the morning went by, Timokles saw a few desert hares, but otherwise he was alone. Toward evening, being compelled to find some food, he searched the district, and found, under the stones, the nest of some wild bees. With much difficulty Timokles obtained a little of the honey.

A falling stone attracted Timokles' attention. Turning with quick affright, he saw a woman. There was a startled suspicion in her eyes, as she gazed at him. She held a young gazelle that had strayed away and had been the object of her search near these hills. Suddenly the woman disappeared without a word.

CHAPTER V.

"Let me hide speedily!" Timokles warned himself.

He ran, but shouts arose behind, and before he could conceal himself, two men came running after him. The woman's shrill cry was audible. The men came up with Timokles, and laying hold of him in a manner not wholly rough but still imperative; they brought him back with them to the spot where the woman still stood.

The three looked at him with curious yet not wholly unfriendly eyes, and Timokles felt relieved on seeing that he was not recognized as any one whom they had seen before. This spot was so far from that on which the building stood where he had been given to the leopard, that the lad concluded these people had not witnessed that scene. Pentaur's caravan would have left the oasis before now. Probably the merchant was about to renew his journey at the time of his visit to the leopard's den.

The woman pointed to Timokles' branded cheek. Taking heart from the apparent lack of real hostility in the manner of his captors, Timokles asked for something to eat. He was understood, and the three, taking Timokles, turned from the hills, and proceeded eastward, till, coming to a black tent near