Stephen: A Soldier of the Cross

by Florence Morse Kingsley

"Anat," he whispered, "something has happened; I will go and see."

The blind girl held him fast for a moment longer. She bent her head. There was no sound save the sighing of the wind outside and the hissing murmur of the sand as it drifted onto the stairway of their prison. "Go," she said with a sigh of relief, "he has departed."

Seth rose cautiously to his feet and crept toward the opening; his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness now, and he could see on either side the vast gaudily-painted wooden cases in which dwelt the dead. Their great eyes stared at him as he hurried past. He stumbled presently over something which lay at the foot of the stone steps. Starting back with a cry he perceived that it was the body of a man. He had fallen upon his face in the sand and lay quite motionless. The lad stared at him for a moment in fascinated silence, then he bethought him that presently the man might recover his senses. Turning, he darted back into the darkness. "Come!" he said breathlessly in the ear of the blind girl.

Treading lightly that they might not awake the sleeper, the two crept up the stair, not without many a fearful backward glance at the quiet figure which still lay on its face, the monstrous staring eyes of the mummies looking on unmoved, and the stealthy wind already beginning to urge the uneasy desert to "Come, cover this man that hath lain him down to sleep unasked in the abode of kings!"

"Shall I put the stone in its place?" said Seth, when they had reached the upper air.

"Yes," said the girl, clenching her thin hands. "Let him bide there till the other shall seek him, and if that be never, then I care not. Would he not have left us to perish? But the gods stayed his hand."

The lad hesitated. "He hath no water."

"Fetch him water then and food also if thou wilt. Thou art soft-hearted; for myself I should leave him as he is. Dost thou not see that it is now that we must make good our escape? Once the man hath recovered himself we are lost. I can hear the bells of his beast, let us seize it and flee away into the desert that we may find the magician who can open the eyes of them that see not."

"We could not pass the wilderness, we should perish by the way."

Anat sat down in the sand. "Thou art a man," she said scornfully, "and therefore wise; I am as the dust under thy feet; I have no eyes to see with, yet shall I tell thee what shall come to pass. Go down now to our enemy whom the gods have smitten, raise him up and pour water into his mouth and upon his head, then when he shall come to himself say to him, 'Here now is thy beast, I will set thee upon it that thou mayest ride. As for this maid whom thou didst covet, behold she is thine; I also will run before thee.'" And the girl laughed aloud, and tossed her head so that all the gold and silver coins of her necklace clinked musically together.