to-day.

The longest part of his task was ransacking the treasurer's office; Nilus
himself had to conduct the search. Everything which he pointed out as a
legal document, title-deed, contract for purchase or sale, revenue
account or the like, was at once placed in oxcarts or on camels, with the
large sums of gold and silver coin, and carried across the river under a
strong escort. All the more antique deeds and the family archives, the
Vekeel left untouched. He was indeed an indefatigable man, for although
these details kept him busy the whole day, he allowed himself no rest nor
did he once ask for the refreshment of food or a cooling draught. As the
day went on he enquired again and again for the bishop, with increasing
impatience and irritation. It would have been his part to wait on the
patriarch, but who was Plotinus? Thin-skinned, like all up-starts in
authority, he took the bishop's delay as an act of personal contumely.
But the shepherd of the flock at Memphis was not a haughty prelate,
but a very humble and pious minister. His superior, the patriarch, had
entrusted him with an important mission to Amru or his lieutenant, and
yet he could let the Vekeel wait in vain, and not even send him a message
of explanation; in the afternoon, however, his old housekeeper dispatched
the acolyte who was attached to his person to seek Philippus. Her
master, a hale and vigorous man, had gone to bed by broad day-light a few
hours after his return home, and had not again left it. He was hot and
thirsty, and did not seem fully conscious of where he was or of what was
happening.

Plotinus had always maintained that prayer was the Christian's best
medicine; still, as his poor body had become alarmingly heated the old
woman ventured to send for the physician; but the messenger came back
saying that Philippus was absent on a journey. This was in fact the