This was no Christian sleeper that lay at Timokles' feet! The lad
turned and fled into the distance.
Through the desert there wailed a thin, plaintive cry. It was the
voice of a night-wandering jackal.
Timokles was dizzy to faintness, and staggered as he was driven on.
He had been discovered and taken. His life had been spared that he
might henceforth be a slave.
"I bear this for thy sake, O Lord, dear Lord!" murmured the
exhausted lad, as the blows drove him through the pathless desert.
Again came the plaintive cry of the wandering jackal.
"For thy sake!" faintly repeated Timokles.
A few minutes passed, and once more the jackal's inarticulate voice
wailed through the desert, but Timokles had fallen, helpless. A man
sprang forward, and the lash fell again and again on Timokles'
prostrate body, but the boy did not stir.
"Now see how the Christian would die in the desert, and cheat us of
all the work he might do!" grumbled the vexed voice of a dismounted
camel-rider. "He is young. There are many years of work in him!"
"Leave him!" scornfully advised another, who held a torch. "Some
beast will find him."
Nay, but he shall go with me to Carthage," asserted a third, from
the height of his camel's back. "Carthage knoweth what to do with
Christians!"
"Who art thou that thou shouldest own the Christian?" demanded the
first, angrily gazing up at the presumptuous rider.
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