e, who left the inn before us, must have told
them of our coming."

"To be sure. Look at that fellow Zopyrus, how he's waving and beckoning
with that palm-leaf."

"Here, you fellows, cut us a few twigs from those bushes-quick. We'll
answer his green palm-leaf with a purple pomegranate-branch."

In a few minutes the friends had embraced one another, and the two bands
were riding together into the populous town, through the gardens
surrounding the lake Gygaeus, the Sardians' place of recreation. It was
now near sunset, a cooler breeze was beginning to blow, and the citizens
were pouring through the gates to enjoy themselves in the open air.
Lydian and Persian warriors, the former wearing richly-ornamented
helmets, the latter tiaras in the form of a cylinder, were following
girls who were painted and wreathed. Children were being led to the lake
by their nurses, to see the swans fed. An old blind man was seated under
a plane-tree, singing sad ditties to a listening crowd and accompanying
them on the Magadis, the twenty-stringed Lydian lute. Youths were
enjoying themselves at games of ball, ninepins, and dice, and half-grown
girls screaming with fright, when the ball hit one of their group or
nearly fell into the water.

The travellers scarcely noticed this gay scene, though at another time it
would have delighted them. They were too much interested in enquiring
particulars of Bartja's illness and recovery.

At the brazen gates of the palace which had formerly belonged to Croesus,
they were met by Oroetes, the satrap of Sardis, in a magnificent
court-dress overloaded with ornaments. He was a stately man, whose small
penetrating black eyes looked sharply out from beneath a bushy mass of
eyebrow. His satrapy was one of the most important and profitable in the
entire kingdom, and his household could bear a comparison with that of
Cambyses in richness and splendor. Though he possessed fewer wives and
attendants than the king, it was no inconsiderable troop of guards,
slaves, eunuchs and gorgeously-dressed officials, which appeared at the
palace-gates to receive the travellers.

The vice-regal palace, which was still kept up with great magnificence,
had been, in the days when Croesus occupied it, the most splendid of
royal residences; after the taking of Sardis, however, the greater part
of the dethroned king's treasures and works of art had been sent to
Cyrus's treasure-house in Pasargadae. When that time of terror had
p