r, and yet
he could not bear to do so, for there was no art in which he was so
inexpert as that of deceit. How hard it was to find the right answer,
when she asked him whether he did not hope everything from the great
physician's intervention, or when she inquired what were the works to
which Galen owed his chief fame!

As they came near to the landing-stage whence the ferry started, she
wanted to know how old he should suppose the Roman leech to be; and
again he avoided answering, for Galen was above eighty, and Serenus
scarcely seventy.

She looked up at him with large, mournful eyes, saying, "Have I offended
you, or is there something you are concealing from me?"

"What could you do to offend me?" he replied; "life is full of sorrows,
my child. You must learn to have patience."

"Patience!" echoed Melissa, sadly. "That is the only knowledge I have
ever mastered. When my father is more sullen than you are, for a week at
a time, I scarcely heed it. But when you look like that, Andreas, it is
not without cause, and that is why I am anxious."

"One we love is very sick, child," he said, soothingly; but she was not
to be put off so, and exclaimed with conviction:

"No, no, it is not that. We have learned nothing fresh about
Diodoro--and you were ready enough to answer me when we came away from
the Christian's house. Nothing but good has happened to us since, and
yet you look as if the locusts had come down on your garden."

They had reached a spot on the shore where a ship was being unloaded
of its cargo of granite blocks from Syene. Black and brown slaves were
dragging them to land. An old blind man was piping a dismal tune on
a small reed flute to encourage them in their work, while two men of
fairer hue, whose burden had been too heavy for them, had let the end
of the column they were carrying sink on the ground, and were being
mercilessly flogged by the overseer to make them once more attempt the
impossible.

Andreas had watched the scene; a surge of fury had brought the blood to
his face, and, stirred by great and genuine emotion, he broke out:

"There--there you see the locusts which destroy my garden--the
hail which ruins my crops! It falls on all that bears the name of
humanity--on me and you. Happy, girl? None of us can ever be happy till
the Kingdom shall arise for which the fullness of the time is come."

"But they dropped the column; I saw them myself," urged Melissa.

"Did you, indeed?" said Andr