He hardly knew whether she understood or not. She gazed at him as if half comprehending his words, and then the fact of his having returned from the House of the Leopard seemed to overwhelm every other thought, and she murmured, "O Christian, I am afraid of thy God and thee!"
She fled back to the black tent. Timokles' bound hands made but awkward work of eating. He could hear the voices of the mother and the daughter talking in the mother's tongue, but what they said he knew not. Would the father or the son learn something about their captive?
The voices hushed within the tent. The hours of sleep came on.
The night had grown black. There were footsteps audible.
"They have come back!" thought Timokles.
The father and the son had returned, and with them came another man. Timokles heard and understood something of what was said at the tent's door in the dark.
"If I may but see his face, I shall know whether he hath been here before," declared the new voice eagerly. "I have seen all who have come to our village."
"Thou shalt see him in the morning," impatiently answered the maker of the hippopotamus. "Knowest thou not that on this day I cannot make a flame by which thou shouldest see? It is the eleventh day of Tybi, concerning which it is commanded by the priests of Egypt, 'Approach not any flame on this day; Ra is there for the purpose of destroying the wicked.'"
"I fear no flame!" muttered the new voice discontentedly. "Let me but see the stranger!"
"There shall no flame be kindled!" burst out in wrath the superstitious father. "Bide thou till morning! Then shalt thou see the branded one."