The instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity. He had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of Stephen's dark locks in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm. His purpose against Saul of Tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous event. He remembered Cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it, again and again through the dark troubled hours. It was a long way yet until he could triumph over the powerful Pharisee, and the stretches of misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of his thoughts. When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on Olivet and watched Saul and Lydia seeking for him in the trampled space without Hanaleel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east. The old Essenic habit was strong in Marsyas. In spite of his long wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear. He arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the only sound in the Alexandrian streets. The stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend. But at the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him a loft let into the ceiling. He went that way and came upon another stairway leading up and out into the open. He mounted it and found himself on the roof of the house. At the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's house could flee from the heat closer the earth. It was furnished with antique Egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century. The young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the arousing of the alabarch's household.