claimed at its conclusion. "What did you say they were to ask at Jerusalem?"
"They were to ask ’Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’"
"Was that all?"
"There was more to the question, but I cannot recall it."
"And they found the child?"
"Yes, and worshipped him."
"It is a miracle, Malluch."
"Ilderim is a grave man, though excitable as all Arabs are. A lie on his tongue is impossible."
Malluch spoke positively. Thereupon the dromedaries were forgotten, and, quite as unmindful of their riders, they turned off the road to the growing grass.
"Has Ilderim nothing more of the three men?" asked Ben-Hur. "What became of them?"
"Ah, yes, that was the cause of his coming to Simonides the day of which I was speaking. Only the night before that day the Egyptian reappeared to him."
"Where?"
"Here at the door of the tent to which we are coming."
"How knew he the man?"
"As you knew the horses to-day by—face and manner."
"By nothing else?"
"He rode the same great white camel, and gave him the same name—Balthasar, the Egyptian."
"It is a wonder of the Lord’s?"
Ben-Hur spoke with excitement.
And Malluch, wondering, asked "Why so?"
"Balthasar, you said?"
"Yes. Balthasar, the Egyptian."
"That was the name the old man gave us at the fountain to-day."
Then, at the reminder, Malluch became excited.
"It is true," he said; "and the camel was the same—and you saved the man’s life."
"And the woman," said Ben-Hur, like one speaking to himself "—the woman was his daughter."
He fell to thinking; and even the reader will say he was having a vision of the woman, and that it was more
