Once he thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind.
Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day.

He dared not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-pouch he carried.
The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming suddenness observed in the desert.

Night was welcome to Timokles, and he came forth.

The lad's heart was very lonely.

He looked toward the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home--his mother, the brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.
"O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst thou see, when thou visitedst Egypt five years ago, that thou shouldest decree such evil against the Egyptian Christians now ?" Softly Timokles went his way in the dark.