He must send it away at once; he had hastened to pack it up with the verses, with his own hand, and entrusted it to Chusar, a horsedealer's groom from Constantinople, who had brought his Pannonian steeds to Memphis.

He had himself seen off this trustworthy messenger, who could speak no Egyptian and very little Greek, and when his horse was lost to sight in the dust of the road leading to Alexandria he had returned home in a calmer mood.

Ships were constantly putting to sea from that port for Constantinople, and Chusar was enjoined to sail by the first that should be leaving.

At least the odious deed should not have been committed in vain; and yet he would have given a year of his life if now he could but know that it had never been done.
"Impossible!" and "Curse it!" were the words he had most frequently repeated in the course of his retrospect during the past night and morning.

How he had had to rush and hurry under the broiling sun! and the sense of being compelled to do so for mere concealment's sake seemed to him--who had never in his life before done anything that he could not justify in the eyes of honest men--so humiliating, that it brought the sweat to his burning brow.