last good
night.

After two sleepless nights and the fatiguing ride which he had just
taken, the sculptor felt weary enough; but when he laid his hand on the
Gaul's brow and breast, and felt their burning heat, he refused Bias's
voluntary offer to watch the sufferer in his place.

If to amuse or forget himself he had caroused far more nights in
succession in Alexandria, why should he not keep awake when the object
in question was to wrest a young life from the grasp of death? This man
and his life were now his highest goal, and he had never yet repented
his foolish eccentricity of imposing discomforts upon himself to help
the suffering.

Bias, on his part, was very willing to go to rest. He had plenty of
cause for weariness; Myrtilus's unscrupulous body-servant had stolen
off with the other slaves the night before, and did not return, with
staggering gait, until the next morning, but, in order to keep his
promise to his master, he had scarcely closed his eyes, that he might be
at hand if Myrtilus should need assistance.

So Bias fell asleep quickly enough in his little room in the lower
story, while his master, by the exertion of all his strength of will,
watched beside the couch of the Gaul.

Yet, after the first quarter of an hour, his head, no matter how he
struggled to prevent it, drooped again and again upon his breast. But
just as slumber was completely overpowering him his patient made him
start up, for he had left his bed, and when Hermon, fully roused, looked
for him, was standing in the middle of the room, gazing about him.

The artist thought that fever had driven the wounded warrior from his
couch, as it formerly did his fellow-pupil Lycon, whom, in the delirium
of typhus, he could keep in bed only by force. So he led the Gaul
carefully back to the couch he had deserted, and, after moistening the
bandage with healing balm from Myrtilus's medicine chest, ordered him to
keep quiet.

The barbarian yielded as obediently as a child, but at first remained in
a sitting posture and asked, in scarcely intelligible broken Greek, how
he came to this place.

After Hermon had satisfied his curiosity, he also put a few questions,
and learned that his charge not only wore a mustache, like his fellow
countrymen, but also a full beard, because the latter was the badge of
the bridge builders, to which class he belonged. While examining the one
crossing the canal, it had fallen in upon him.

He closed his eyes as h