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Updated: May 9, 2025
Timokles was moved with compassion for his former owner, and yet the lad kept silent. "Shall I speak to him?" Timokles questioned himself. "If he shall be beset in some other place by those who hate Christians, will he not abandon me again to my enemies?" The merchant waited a moment longer. "Oh, Osiris!" then he wailed again, "I have been righteous! He was only a Christian!"
Most of all did he linger about the spot where, it seemed to him, he had entered, and more than once as he touched the surface of the wall, seeking for some hidden spring, he thought he heard behind him the leopard's soft footsteps, but, turning hastily, found himself mistaken. At length, in his search, Timokles slightly stumbled over some lumps of mud that had fallen from the roof.
"O my brother! my brother!" murmured Heraklas, the tears running down his face in the dark, "I am Heraklas! I, too, am a Christian!" "Heraklas!" cried Timokles, "Heraklas! How camest thou hither?" "Peace!" whispered Heraklas in terror. "Thou wilt be heard!" Heraklas cast his arms about his brother and clung to him.
Out of the recesses of the rocks, some forms arose, and Heraklas, as in a dream, saw his mother, his proud mother she who had burned incense to the sun, she who had once held the sacred sistrum in Amun's temple, she who had taught him to worship Isis, and Osiris, and Horus, and the River Nile his mother throw her arms about Timokles, and kiss his scarred cheek, and sob on the young Christian's neck, "O my son, I have missed thee so!
They turned again, and passed the third. Now they turned, and this wall was the one that Timokles had not before had opportunity to examine closely, because of the leopard's proximity to it. But now he dared not look from the leopard. "Oh!" whispered Timokles' pale lips, "what shall I do!" Suddenly life seemed sweeter to him than ever before. He must not fall into the jaws of this fearful beast!
Suddenly there was a cry of other voices. Up from the rocks of the plateau behind the five there sprang a second group of persons. The five Christians, knowing the voices of their former heathen captors, fled. The lad Timokles was closely pursued. He felt, rather than heard, close behind him, the footsteps of his enemy, and, turning sharply, Timokles sped away in another direction.
As for thy gods, we will neither serve nor adore them. "O my master," continued Timokles, with trembling voice, "thinkest thou not that the God who so strengthened three women that they did not shrink from death for his sake, could strengthen me to meet death, also?"
This offense, in the days of Roman rule, was punishable by condemnation to labor in the mines, or by branding and transportation to an oasis of the desert. Timokles, innocent of the crime charged upon him, having been at home in Alexandria during the time when he was accused of having been abroad on the evil errand, was dragged away to exile, for was he not a Christian?
He remembered what the Egyptians were wont to say, when on the nineteenth day of the first month, they ate honey and eggs in honor of Thoth: "How sweet a thing is truth!" Heraklas murmured with a heavy sigh, "Timokles told me he had found 'the truth' O Timokles, is thy 'truth' sweet to thee now? Oh, my brother, my brother!"
He looked beseechingly at her now, as she stood transfixed, the shocked expression deepening in her eyes. If she should say a word! Timokles could feel himself tremble. She had thought him dead! She knew him! If she should say so! The silent appeal of Timokles' beseeching face seemed to find its answer for the moment. The girl turned toward the work of the idol-makers.
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