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Updated: June 1, 2025
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?
He knew of the little company of Christians that had been brought captive to Alexandria, for a slave belonging to another household had told Athribis secretly, "He who was once thy young master the Christian, Timokles hath been brought in from the desert and goeth on the ship!" In his heart Athribis made answer, "The ship needeth another passenger my young master, the Christian, Heraklas!"
Suddenly Heraklas, attracted perhaps by the silent force that lies in a human gaze; lifted his head from his reading, and glanced upward. Athribis had not time to start aside. The eyes of the two met in a long, piercing gaze! Heraklas sprang to his feet. The papyrus fell, on the loose brick beside him.
To leave well alone is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my dear, a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped, always kept rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice. Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't find a better model, any Kitty, than the ladies of Bubastis!"
Athribis' head vanished instantly, and Heraklas, snatching the papyrus, wound it closely, and thrust it into his garments. He hastily replaced the loose brick. No safe place for the papyrus would the hole be, hereafter. When he met Athribis afterwards in a corridor, Heraklas felt his heart beat more quickly against the hidden roll. But the lad was stern in outward semblance. "Athribis!" he said.
He glanced stealthily around, and, kneeling still, unrolled the writing, and read in eager haste, one hand on the brick, ready at the sound of any coming footsteps to thrust the papyrus quickly into the wall again. It was a thing well pleasing to the treacherous soul of Athribis that he should have discovered some secret of his master.
Yet never, from the day when Heraklas spied Athribis watching the reading of the roll, had the slave, with all his contriving, been able again to catch sight of the papyrus. It was no longer kept in its secret hole behind the bricks. Athribis had looked. Where else had he not looked? He had hunted the house through as thoroughly as he had been able, snatching a hasty opportunity here and there.
No suspicion concerning it had crossed his mind till now. "Oh, that I could see what he readeth!" wished Athribis vainly. "What meaneth that large sign? Is it the 'tau'?" Heraklas farther unrolled the papyrus, and the mark of the cross that had caught Athribis' eye and had interested him, vanished.
Some of the slaves could read, and they were sure this was so. Out on the docks, Athribis stared now at the large mast of the ship, and at the ship's painted eye, and at the sculptured figure of the goddess Isis on the visible side of the ship's bow, both eye and figure, as Athribis knew, being duplicated on the bow's other side.
It was his voice that Athribis had heard, and the same voice spoke on: "My children," continued the father, "our days on earth come to a close. Let us sing our twilight hymn, for now indeed our work is nearly done." Above the scornful tumult rose the four voices, singing the "Twilight," or "Candle Hymn," of the early Christians.
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