The dull eyes brightened a little, "Did I save him? Ah, yes--thanks be to the gods! thou art alive. Did any hurt befall thee?"
"Nay--but I live, alas, because thou art to die."
"It is well, not only that thou wilt live, but that I shall die, if the God whom thou dost proclaim will but count my worthless life a sacrifice for my many sins."
"Nay, my brother," said Stephen, "if thou dost but believe on Jesus the Christ, there is no sacrifice needed for sin; he gave himself a sacrifice for our transgressions because of the love which he bare us."
"It cannot be that he loves me," said the sick man. "Listen till I shall tell thee all. I am an Egyptian, my name is Amu----"
The maiden who still stood at his bedside grew very white at the sound of that name, and the newcomer, who was watching from behind, reached quietly out and took the basin from her nerveless fingers. "Anat," he whispered, "'tis a common enough name."
"It is he," she returned, "I know the voice--but listen!"
"Early in life," continued the Egyptian, his voice gathering strength, "I was even as others, neither better, nor worse,--'tis not of those days I would speak, but of the days when I was a man grown--then it chanced that there came a certain stranger out of the wilderness with his wife and child, and sojourned in Egypt. He possessed gold and bought for himself a plot of land not far from the river. This he tilled with industry, so that after a time he gained more gold and bought still another bit of tillage. Not much, for land was costly in the neighborhood of the river. I was his neighbor and I was not unfriendly to him, for he was a stranger and knew not the ways of the people, nor at the first the proper grains to cast into the earth. And because I helped him in such small matters he loved me and clave to me, as also his wife; and I was ever an honored guest in their house. After a time, there came a great sickness over all the region about the upper Nile, because the river failed to overflow his banks at the proper season. The people were wasted by it, and they died by hundreds and by thousands. My father and my brothers died; and the plot of land which had been theirs came to me.
"After a time the man who had come out of the wilderness was likewise stricken, and his wife; and when it presently appeared that they both must die, he sent for me and spake to me after this manner, 'My friend, who hath been to me even as a brother in this land of strangers wherein we have sojourned, I am sorely stricken, both I and the mother of the children, and it must presently come to pass that we be gathered to our fathers; but before my soul passes I would fain speak to thee of my little ones who will be left desolate, if so be that the plague spares them.' 'Speak,' I made answer, 'I will do with them as thou dost command.' Then he told me how that he was a Greek born in Antioch, and the son of a rich man. After his father died a fierce quarrel arose betwixt the two brothers over the division of the inheritance; and when after many days the bitterness still continued, it came to pass that he smote his brother and wounded him sore; then taking what he would he fled away into the wilderness. There he took to himself a wife from the tribes that wandered in the desert and afterward came to dwell in Egypt.
"'Now I pray and beseech thee,' he said to me, 'by all that thou boldest sacred, that thou wilt take my two children and the price of the land--when thou shalt have sold it--and fetch them to my brother, for I have heard that he yet liveth, and say to him this: Thy brother is dead. He sendeth thee the money that he took away--and more; and here are also his two children. Let them find favor in thy sight, I pray thee, for they are desolate.'