"I have not forgotten, but I would like to stay here."
"And the dromedary?"
"Thou must find it. It was not I who would leave it without in the hands of a stranger. The lord of the desert is just in requiring it at thy hands."
The lad turned away. "Be it so," he cried angrily. "Till I have found it, thou wilt see my face no more; if that be never, why then----"
"Seth, Seth! Stay a moment, my brother! do not leave me so!" But he was gone, and without turning his head.
"How can I find the beast?" he muttered to himself crossly, as he plunged into the labyrinth of narrow streets. "I have asked everywhere for the man Gestas, no one knows him; as for the white dromedary, men look at me as if I were a witless fool when I speak of it. If now I were in Egypt, I should offer a libation to Ptah Hotep, or fetch a garland to the temple of the sacred bull, then might I receive wisdom; if I pray to the gods of this land, how will they heed me who am an alien?" At this point in his meditation the lad flung himself down in the shadow of an archway, his eyes following idly the darting flight of the sparrows overhead; something in their noisy crying brought back the memory of the day when he bent half distracted over the unconscious form of Anat. "There is a God who can hear somewhere," he said half aloud. "For he both heard and answered the man who healed Anat; yet is it a great thing to heal blindness, I dare not ask him to help me find a beast of burden. Is there not some smaller god who cares for common things? 'Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father.'" Where had he heard those words? It was John who had spoken them after the scourging before the council. "That means his father, not mine;" he went on meditatively, "I am not a Jew. Yet are there sparrows in Egypt also; if I pray to this God, he will not I suppose strike me dead; I will try and see what comes of it. God of this land--Jesus--if that be thy name! I am as thou seest an Egyptian, and I know not what offering is pleasing unto thee; and if I knew I could not provide it, for I am poorer than yonder sparrow. Yet if it be true that thou dost care for such, help me also, I pray thee, to find the white dromedary, which is justly required at my hands by the lord of the desert."
When he had prayed thus, a vague comfort stole into his heart; he opened his eyes and looking down the street, saw coming toward him two men. One of them he instantly recognized as the man in whose keeping he had left the dromedary; with a little cry of joy he started to his feet, but shrank back again into the archway, and seeing a broken place in the wall, he squeezed himself into it and stood motionless. "I will follow after them when they have passed by," he thought within himself. "It may be that so I shall come upon the beast unawares; if he sees me, it will not come to pass."
But the two paused beneath the archway, and finally sat down on the stones, neither of them noticing the motionless figure in the black shadow of the broken wall.
"Give me thy flask if thou hast in it a swallow of wine; I am parched with the heat," said the one who was called Gestas.
"I have no wine," replied the other; "water is better."