Heraklas' small sister, the child Cocce, sat on the pavement in the central court of her home in Alexandria. Above her towered three palms that shaded the court. Beside the little girl was an Egyptian toy, the figure of a man kneading dough. The man would work, if a string were pulled, but Cocce had thrown the toy aside. Lower and lower sank the small, brown head, more and more sleepily closed the large, brown eyes, till the child drooped against a stone table that was supported by the stone figure of a captive, bending beneath the weight of the table's top. As Heraklas entered the court his eyes fell upon his sleeping little sister, but he noted more closely the stone captive against which she leaned. Heraklas marked how the captive was represented to bend beneath the table's weight. The boy's eyes grew fierce. Captivity seemed a cruel thing, since Timokles had gone into it. Heraklas flung himself on a seat covered by a leopard's skin, and gazed moodily upward at the palm-leaves, one or two of which stirred faintly under the slight wind that came from a corridor, whither the wooden wind-sails,--sloping boards commonly fixed over the terraces of the upper portions of Egyptian houses,--had conducted the current of air. Borne from the streets of Alexandria, there seemed to Heraklas to come certain new, half-heard noises. He listened, yet nothing definite reached his ears. At length, seeing through a range of pillars a slave moving in the distance, Heraklas summoned the man, and asked what was the cause of the faintly-heard sounds. "The people destroy the possessions of some of the Christians," humbly replied the slave, whose name was Athribis; and Heraklas, stung to the quick by the answer, impatiently motioned the man away. Left alone, Heraklas lifted his head proudly. He would ignore the pain. What had he to do with the Christians? He, who had watched his consecration-night in the temple of Isis; he, who had caught some sight of the Mysteries sacred to that goddess; he, who had worn the harsh linen robe and those symbolic robes in which a novice watches his dream-indicated night--what had he to do with Christians? Would that Timokles had observed the emperor's command that no one should become a Christian! Heraklas groaned. The dismissed man-slave, Athribis, looked cautiously back through the pillars, and smiled. None knew better than he how any reference to the Christians stabbed the hearts of this family. Athribis himself hated the Christians. He longed to be out in Alexandria's streets this moment, that he, too, might be at liberty to pillage the Christians' houses. Who knew what jewels he might find? And he must stay here, polishing a corridor's pavement, when such things, were being done in the streets! His dark eyes glanced back again. Heraklas' head was bowed. Stealthily Athribis passed out of sight of the court. He threaded his way through corridors. "Whither goest thou?" asked another slave by the threshold.