"Let me hide speedily!" Timokles warned himself.

He ran, but shouts arose behind, and before he could conceal
himself, two men came running after him. The woman's shrill cry was
audible. The men came up with Timokles, and laying hold of him in a
manner not wholly rough but still imperative; they brought him back
with them to the spot where the woman still stood.

The three looked at him with curious yet not wholly unfriendly eyes,
and Timokles felt relieved on seeing that he was not recognized as
any one whom they had seen before. This spot was so far from that on
which the building stood where he had been given to the leopard,
that the lad concluded these people had not witnessed that scene.
Pentaur's caravan would have left the oasis before now. Probably the
merchant was about to renew his journey at the time of his visit to
the leopard's den.

The woman pointed to Timokles' branded cheek. Taking heart from the
apparent lack of real hostility in the manner of his captors,
Timokles asked for something to eat. He was understood, and the
three, taking Timokles, turned from the hills, and proceeded
eastward, till, coming to a black tent near some palms, the woman
went in and brought Timokles some barley cakes.

While the boy ate, the two men, still watching him, betook
themselves to work. They seemed to be makers of idols. The father
was carving a small wooden statuette of the god Thoth. The son
worked on a larger idol, the goddess Apet, or Thoueris, in the shape
of a hippopotamus walking upright on hind feet. The idol was of