The dark form passed by again. A chill went over Timokles, as he thought he saw a weapon in the man's hand. The footsteps became inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the darkness above the boy, descended and rested an instant on the gravel next him--but did not touch him. The silent menace of the groping hand was terrible. Timokles held his breath. The hand passed on, feeling of other rocks. "O God of thy people, thou hast hidden me!" cried Timokles in his heart, as he heard the soft rubbing of his enemy's hand against the farther rocks. The sound died away. Timokles lay listening for a long time. Once he thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind. Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-pouch he carried. The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles, and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home--his mother, the brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth. "O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst thou see, when thou visitedst Egypt five years ago, that thou shouldest decree such evil against the Egyptian Christians now?" Softly Timokles went his way in the dark. He was hungry, yet he dared eat little of the dried dates he had with him. When would he find other food? For a time he looked warily around, but soon his sense of loneliness overcame his fear, and he watched more for some sign of his four friends than for an indication of an enemy. "Perhaps some Christian hath escaped, even as I have," thought Timokles. He started. Outstretched before him lay a figure of a man! Timokles stood motionless, till he perceived the man be to be asleep. Then the lad bent over the sleeper to scan his face. But, as Timokles stooped, he dimly saw, in the relaxed, open palm of the man's hand, a small stone of the triangular form under which the Egyptians were wont to worship Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Such are the stones found in the tombs of the Egyptians. This was no Christian sleeper that lay at Timokles' feet! The lad turned and fled into the distance. Through the desert there wailed a thin, plaintive cry. It was the voice of a night-wandering jackal.