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Updated: June 1, 2025
It seemed incredible that even Christians would be foolish enough to fill a treasure-box with nothing but rolls of writing, and then conceal the box so carefully behind this wind-sail! Athribis purposely lingered a little behind the other men. He snatched up the rolls, and having hidden them in his garment, hurried from the roof. "I am a Christian," calmly said a voice in the court.
I came here only to be certain thou wert on the ship." "Camest thou from her to me on that errand?" asked Timokles calmly. Athribis laughed, and turned to go. "Farewell, my Christian master! Farewell!" said the slave, mockingly. There was an instant's silence. The great lion sighed from his cage. Then answered Timokles' low voice, "O Athribis, may my God become thine, also!"
It could not be possible that he would be disappointed in the last scroll! Was there no treasure? Not a thin wedge of gold at the heart of this papyrus? Not a jewel, not anything that savored of riches? Athribis' shaking fingers unrolled the papyrus to its very end. Nothing but the continuous writing, and the stick on which the scroll had been rolled! His limp hand let fall the end of the papyrus.
But, as yet, Athribis hardly dared say so, for he had no certain proof to bring of Heraklas' Christianity. If only he could find decisive proof, and bring it before the authorities, what a reward he might hope to have given him!
The mark seemed to the slave like the Egyptian "tau" or sign of life; used afterwards, curiously enough, by the Christians of Europe as a prefix to inscriptions. Numbers of inscriptions headed by the tau have remained even to the present time, in early Christian sepulchres in the Great Oasis. "If that were the tau, there may be no harm in the writing," thought Athribis sullenly.
Then, tradition said, there had arisen a dreadful tempest of hail and lightning, that destroyed the murderous heathen. Was the Christian God greater than Serapis, the great deity of Egypt? Such thinking sent Heraklas back again to study the papyrus of John's Gospel. And now Athribis wearied, waiting for Heraklas' reading to end.
"Where are the lentiles?" asked the slave by the threshold, as Athribis, forgetful, in his excitement, of the excuse he had made for his departure, passed swiftly and softly in. "I found none," quickly answered Athribis, with alarm. He sped silently to his former place of work, and fell to polishing the pavement with a zeal unknown before.
A laugh came, as the slave's reply. Athribis and his conductor went away. The light faded from the hold. Heraklas crept near the Christians. "Timokles!" he whispered. "Timokles! O Timokles, my brother!" From the bound Christians came no answer to Heraklas' cry, though there was a startled movement among them.
He knew well enough that the slave by the threshold would not believe in that excuse, lentiles being plentiful enough. Terror had robbed Athribis' deceitful tongue of its usual cunning, and now he silently bewailed his startled answer. If the slave by the threshold should report to Heraklas' mother the fact that Athribis had been away!
The wind tossed the long streamers, and as Athribis in fearful haste snatched them, the breeze blew one scroll entirely free. It, swept from the roof, and, descending into the court, hung in a long strip from one of the palms. The dismayed Athribis cast the other papyri on the roof, and fled. It was time. The house was being aroused by the cry of the woman.
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