perceive that not seldom a pleased smile, though not less often a
somewhat bitter one, played upon the lips of the prudent and judicious
man. He was one of those who can play with their children like a young
mother, take the sorrows of another as much to heart as if they were
their own, and yet who look so gloomy, and allow themselves to make such
sharp speeches, that only those who are on terms of perfect confidence
with them, cease to misunderstand them and fear them. There was
something fretting the soul of this man, who nevertheless possessed all
that could contribute to human happiness. His was a thankful nature,
and yet he was conscious that he might have been destined to something
greater than fate had permitted him to achieve or to be. He had remained
a stone-cutter, but his sons had both completed their education in good
schools in Alexandria. The elder, Antonius, who already had a house of
his own and a wife and children, was an architect and artist-mechanic;
the younger, Polykarp, was a gifted young sculptor. The noble church of
the oasis-city had been built under the direction of the elder; Polykarp,
who had only come home a month since, was preparing to establish and
carry on works of great extent in his father's quarries, for he had
received a commission to decorate the new court of the Sebasteion or
Caesareum, as it was called--a grand pile in Alexandria--with twenty
granite lions. More than thirty artists had competed with him for this
work, but the prize was unanimously adjudged to his models by qualified
judges. The architect whose function it was to construct the colonnades
and pavement of the court was his friend, and had agreed to procure the
blocks of granite, the flags and the columns which he required from
Petrus' quarries, and not, as had formerly been the custom, from those
of Syene by the first Cataract.

Antonius and Polykarp were now standing with their father before a large
table, explaining to him a plan which they had worked out together and