grain fields and bestowing peace beside the domestic hearth. The whole
world once more seemed peopled with deities, and he felt their rule in
his own breast.

The place of which Bias had told him was situated on a lofty portion of
the shore. Beside the springs which there gushed from the soil of the
desert grew green palm trees and thorny acacias. Farther on flourished
the fragrant betharan. About a thousand paces from this spot the
faithful freedman pitched the little tent obtained in Tennis under the
shade of several tall palm trees and a sejal acacia.

Not far from the springs lived the same family of Amalekites whom Bias
had known from boyhood. They raised a few vegetables in little beds, and
the men acted as guards to the caravans which came from Egypt through the
peninsula of Sinai to Petrea and Hebron. The daughter of the aged sheik
whose men accompanied the trains of goods, a pleasant, middle-aged woman,
recognised the Biamite, who when a boy had recovered under her mother's
nursing, and promised Bias to honour his blind master as a valued guest
of the tribe.

Not until after he had done everything in his power to render life in the
wilderness endurable, and had placed a fresh bandage over his eyes, would
Bias leave his master.

The freedman entered the boat weeping, and Hermon, deeply agitated,
turned his face toward him.

When he was left alone with his Egyptian slave, with whom he rarely
exchanged a word, he fancied that, amid the murmur of the waves washing
the strand at his feet, blended the sounds of the street which led past