Sarchedon again prostrated himself at his visitor's feet.
"If you tell me true," he exclaimed, "I am the faithful servant of my lord for ever more."
"You will remember me when you are in Babylon," returned the other. "You will recall the wisdom and power of the Egyptians. You will tell your countrymen the wonders that I, the least and lowest amongst their wise and great, have shown you without an effort, and you will not forget that I have been your friend, even in your extreme need. Farewell! He who sent me summons me back to his presence, and we shall not meet again!"
Even while he spoke, a thick cloud of aromatic vapour filled the dungeon as before; when it cleared away the visitor was gone, and Sarchedon, looking blankly about him, began to think he had been the sport of his own fancy, beguiled by the illusions of a dream.
CHAPTER XXVI
DELIVERANCE
Had his bodily powers been weakened by starvation, his mind, enfeebled in proportion, might, he thought, have played him false. But no; food and wine had been supplied with constant regularity; and testing his faculties in every way he could think of, he found them equal to any effort of observation or reflection he desired to make. Once more he tried the walls of his dungeon, and failed to discover the slightest symptoms of an opening through which the visitor could have passed. This seemed less surprising, as the blossoming of the ebony rod and sudden growth of the lotus in flower denoted supernatural powers, which might well penetrate a cubit of brickwork and a fathom or two of solid earth. These wonders he accepted without question as worked by the spells of that magic lore which could compel the gods themselves to do its bidding; nor did he see reason to doubt, in his simple credulity, those glimpses of the future which, though sealed to his own eyes, seemed clear as day to his companion.
And that companion—who and what could he be? Sarchedon, whose ideas of a magician were of the vaguest, had yet some indistinct persuasion that such a professor must be old and stately, with long gray beard and thoughtful wrinkled brow. His late visitor, however, could scarcely yet have reached middle life, and on his countenance, so far as he had observed it, was stamped the wary vigilance, the keen foresight, of the man of action, rather than the serene and saddened wisdom that denotes the man of thought. Those eyes, too, haunted him strangely. Where had he seen the piercing gaze, half pitiful, half mocking, that seemed to master a man's inmost feelings, and scorn them while it read? He grew very restless and uneasy now. He paced to and fro in his dungeon, clenching his hands, grinding his teeth, longing with wild feverish desire to breathe the desert air, and strike a blow for liberty in the light of day once more.
He had been calm, quiet, almost resigned when captivity seemed inevitable, and death near at hand.