Out of the Triangle: A Story of the Far East

by Mary E. Bamford

CHAPTER VI.

Athribis the slave bent lower—lower yet. What was this that he saw? He was on the roof of the house in Alexandria. Through an open space beside the wind-sail next to him, he could look into a small room below.

In that room, his master Heraklas knelt and carefully drew a brick from its place in the wall. Putting his hand into some hole that seemed to be behind the bricks, Heraklas produced a roll of papyrus. He glanced stealthily around, and, kneeling still, unrolled the writing, and read in eager haste, one hand on the brick, ready at the sound of any coming footsteps to thrust the papyrus quickly into the wall again. It was a thing well pleasing to the treacherous soul of Athribis that he should have discovered some secret of his master.

"What is the writing, that he hideth it there?" the slave questioned himself.

Heraklas continued to read. Stretched on his perch, and straining his neck to look, Athribis deemed the time long. His prying eyes noted carefully the distance of the loose brick from the floor. Athribis did not recognize the papyrus as one that he had seen before. The sight of any papyrus, however, had been distasteful to him since the night of his adventure on the roof, but he thought the papyri of that escapade safely burned long ago. He knew that Heraklas' mother had ordered those destroyed that were found on the roof. Athribis supposed the one also burnt that had fallen into the court. What else should have become of it? No suspicion concerning it had crossed his mind till now.

"Oh, that I could see what he readeth!" wished Athribis vainly. "What meaneth that large sign? Is it the 'tau'?"

Heraklas farther unrolled the papyrus, and the mark of the cross that had caught Athribis' eye and had interested him, vanished. The mark seemed to the slave like the Egyptian "tau" or sign of life; used afterwards, curiously enough, by the Christians of Europe as a prefix to inscriptions. Numbers of inscriptions headed by the tau have remained even to the present time, in early Christian sepulchres in the Great Oasis.

"If that were the tau, there may be no harm in the writing," thought Athribis sullenly. "Yet why hideth he here?"

The supposed sign of the tau rolled in sight again, as Heraklas shifted the papyrus.

Heraklas had discovered the papyrus when it hung from the palm in the court. Seeing the character of the writing, he had kept the roll for secret perusal. He conjectured that the thief, supposed to have been on the roof, might have dropped the roll. During the three months that had elapsed since Heraklas found the papyrus hanging from the palm, he had come often to this secret hiding-place. He knew his mother would destroy the Christians' Book, if she saw it. He knew the servants were not to be trusted in the matter.