There was something fretting the soul of this man, who nevertheless possessed all that could contribute to human happiness.

His was a thankful nature, and yet he was conscious that he might have been destined to something greater than fate had permitted him to achieve or to be.

He had remained a stone-cutter, but his sons had both completed their education in good schools in Alexandria.

The elder, Antonius, who already had a house of his own and a wife and children, was an architect and artist-mechanic; the younger, Polykarp, was a gifted young sculptor.

The noble church of the oasis-city had been built under the direction of the elder; Polykarp, who had only come home a month since, was preparing to establish and carry on works of great extent in his father's quarries, for he had received a commission to decorate the new court of the Sebasteion or Caesareum, as it was called--a grand pile in Alexandria--with twenty granite lions.