left together. Melissa sighed deeply; but
her brother went up to her, laid his arm round her shoulder, and said:
"Poor child! you have indeed a hard time of it. Eighteen years old, and
as pretty as you are, to be kept locked up as if in prison! No one would
envy you, even if your fellow-captive and keeper were younger and less
gloomy than your father is! But we know what it all means. His grief
eats into his soul, and it does him as much good to storm and scold, as
it does us to laugh."

"If only the world could know how kind his heart really is!" said the
girl.

"He is not the same to his friends as to us," said Alexander; but
Melissa shook her head, and said sadly: "He broke out yesterday against
Apion, the dealer, and it was dreadful. For the fiftieth time he had
waited supper for you two in vain, and in the twilight, when he had
done work, his grief overcame him, and to see him weep is quite
heartbreaking! The Syrian dealer came in and found him all tearful, and
being so bold as to jest about it in his flippant way--"

"The old man would give him his answer, I know!" cried her brother with
a hearty laugh. "He will not again be in a hurry to stir up a wounded
lion."

"That is the very word," said Melissa, and her large eyes sparkled. "At
the fight in the Circus, I could not help thinking of my father, when
the huge king of the desert lay with a broken spear in his loins,
whining loudly, and burying his maned head between his great paws. The
gods are pitiless!"

"Indeed they are," replied the youth, with deep conviction; but his
sister looked up at him in surprise.

"Do you say so, Alexander? Yes, indeed--you looked just now as I never
saw you before. Has misfortune overtaken you too?"

"Misfortune?" he repeated, and he gently stroked her hair. "No, not
exactly; and you know my woes sit lightly enough on me. The immortals
have indeed shown me very plainly that it is their will sometimes to
spoil the feast of life with a right bitter draught. But, like the moon
itself, all it shines on is doomed to change--happily! Many things here
below seem strangely ordered. Like ears and eyes, hands and feet, many
things are by nature double, and misfortunes, as they say, commonly come
in couples yoked like oxen."

"Then you have had some twofold blow?" asked Melissa, clasping her hands
over her anxiously throbbing bosom.

"I, child! No, indeed. Nothing has befallen your father's younger son;
and if I were a philosophe