his decision whether he
would return to Alexandria at all.

Soon after Hermon had learned from Gras that the stars had risen, he was
informed that he must wait patiently for his interview with the Egyptian,
as he had been summoned to the capital that very day by a messenger from
Proclus.

Then the steward had fresh cause to marvel at his charge, for this news
aroused the most vehement excitement.

In fact, it afforded the prospect of a series--perhaps a long one--of the
most torturing days and nights. And the dreaded hours actually came--nay,
the anguish of uncertainty had become almost unendurable, when, on the
seventh day, the Egyptian at last returned from Alexandria. They had
seemed like weeks to Hermon, had made his face thinner, and mingled the
first silver hairs in his black beard.

The calls of the cheerful notary and the daily visits of the leech, an
elderly man, who had depressed rather than cheered him by informing him
of many cases like his own which all proved incurable, had been his sole
diversion. True, the heads of the Greek residents of Tennis had also
sometimes sought him: the higher government officials, the lessees of the
oil monopoly and the royal bank, as well as Gorgias, who, next to Archias
the Alexandrian, owned the largest weaving establishments, but the tales
of daily incidents with which they entertained Hermon wearied him. He
listened with interest only to the story of Ledscha's disappearance, yet
he perceived, from the very slight impression it made upon him, how
little he had really cared for the Biamite girl.

His inquiries about Gula called down upon him many well-meant jests. She
was with her parents; while Taus, Ledscha's young sister, was staying at
the brick-kiln, where the former had reduced the unruly slaves to
submission.

Care had been taken to provide for his personal safety, for the attack
might perhaps yet prove to have been connected with the jealousy of the
Biamite husbands.

The commandant of Pelusium had therefore placed a small garrison of
heavily armed soldiers and archers in Tennis, for whom tents had been
pitched on the site of the burned white house.

Words of command and signals for changing the guards often reached Hermon
when he was on the deck of his ship, and visitors praised the wise
caution and prompt action of Alexander the Great's old comrade.

The notary, a vivacious man of fifty, who had lived a long time in
Alexandria and, asserting that he grew