he had first appeared. His foot plunged to its ankle through a weak
place in the mats. He shrieked aloud at the fear of falling through
into the room below. Hurrying forward, he disappeared down the side
of the building. Timokles heard the man running among the fallen
stones. The footsteps grew faint, and ceased to be audible.

Timokles drew a breath of thankfulness. He crept and felt in the
dark for a few, scattered dates that he had before noticed lying
near the roof's edge, the fruit having fallen from a date palm and
having lain there till nearly as dry as shards. But there was still
nutriment left in the dates, and, having eaten nothing since
morning, he gnawed the fruit.

He could not descend by the date palm's trunk, for that was too far
from the roof to be reached by him. The palm's straight trunk shot
up twenty cubits above the roof's level, and, after the manner of
the date palm's growth, bore no branches, such as the doum palm has.

"How did Pentaur climb?" thought Timokles.

The lad passed to the other edge, where the merchant had
disappeared. Here, a little lower as yet than the roof, he found a
group of young doum palms, the branching stems of which variety of
trees he had noticed here and there in forest-like clumps throughout
the oasis. Timokles found no difficulty in descending with the doum
palms' help, and he reflected that perhaps food for the leopard was
often brought up this way, and thrown to the creature through the
roof's holes. No one had come to-day with food, because the
Christian had been sent to keep the leopard company!