"Isis and Osiris bless thee!" wished the suppliant. Heraklas' lips parted to answer. Should he, who had been blessed of the Lord, seem to accept the blessing of idols? But the beggar turned to another giver, and Heraklas hurried on his way. Before he could reach home, a sacred procession came in sight. Already Heraklas could plainly see the leopard-skin that fitted over the linen robes of the Egyptian high priest who was coming. Twelve or sixteen inferior priests walked beside the superior one. The high priest's lock of hair, pendant on one side of his head, became more and more plain to Heraklas with every step of the procession. "They carry the shrine of the sacred beetle of the sun," suspected Heraklas. "I cannot meet them!" He turned, and dashed down the first opening that presented itself. The passage led him utterly out of his way. "But better so," meditated Heraklas, "than that I should have met that skin-dressed priest!" He stopped an instant. His circuitous way had led him in sight of a spot where he had once seen the Christian woman, Marcella, and her daughter Potamiaena, passing on their way to martyrdom. How awful a form of martyrdom was it that Alexandria visited upon that beautiful Christian daughter! Gradually, hot, scalding pitch was poured over her body, in order that she might endure the utmost torture possible. Heraklas looked around him at the proud, beautiful city. "O Alexandria, Alexandria!" he whispered, "in thee is found the blood of the saints!" For a moment the thought of such a death, as a Christian's punishment, overcame him. Yet he remembered that it was through Potamiaena's martyrdom that the soldier, Basilides, was led to become a Christian also. He refused to take a pagan oath, and was brought to martyrdom. When Heraklas reached home, he was trembling. His short journey had been freighted with silent meaning. CHAPTER VII. Two men passed out of the Gate of the Sun, the northern gate of Alexandria, and came to the docks that bordered the Great Port. The gaze of one man wandered from the promontory of Locrias on the east to the isle of Pharos on the north, and followed back the dyke that connected that island with the docks and marked the division between the Great Port and Alexandria's other harbor, the Port of Eunostus. "When that ship saileth," remarked the man, indicating a large vessel moored in the Great Port, "some Christians go as ballast!" "How knowest thou?" asked the other. The former speaker smiled. "Thou didst not see a little procession that came through the Gate of Necropolis last evening," he conjectured. "Some Christians brought in from the desert. This ship carrieth them to Rome, to the lions of the arena." An unbelieving spirit looked from the other man's eyes. "When the Christians see that ship waiting for them, they will recant," he prophesied. "A man doth not readily take shipping for the port of a lion's mouth!"