m the high walls of the court, and at the same
time she felt the fingers of her antagonist gradually and slowly slip
from her arm like the straps of a sandal carefully lifted by the surgeon
from a broken ankle.

"It is all over with him!" exclaimed the eldest of the Cypriotes. "A man
never calls out like that but once in his life! True enough--the dagger
is sticking here just under the ninth rib! This is mad work! That is
your doing again, Lykos, you savage wolf!"

"He bit deep into my finger in the struggle--"

"And you are for ever tearing each other to pieces for the sake of the
women," interrupted the elder, not listening to the other's excuses.
"Well, I was no better than you in my time, and nothing can alter it!
You had better be off now, for if the Epistrategist learns we have
fallen to stabbing each other again--"

The Cypriote had not ceased speaking, and his countrymen were in the
very act of raising the body of their comrade when a division of the
civic watch rushed into the court in close order and through the passage
near which the fight for the girl had arisen, thus stopping the way
against those who were about to escape, since all who wished to get out
of the court into the open street must pass through the doorway into
which Klea had been forced by the horseman. Every other exit from this
second court of the citadel led into the strictly guarded gardens and
buildings of the palace itself.

The noisy strife round Klea, and the cry of the wounded man had
attracted the watch; the Cypriotes and the maiden soon found themselves
surrounded, and they were conducted through a narrow side passage into
the court-yard of the prison. After a short enquiry the men who had been
taken were allowed to return under an escort to their own phalanx, and
Klea gladly followed the commander of the watch to a less brilliantly
illuminated part of the prison-yard, for in him she had recognized at
once Serapion's brother Glaucus, and he in her the daughter of the man
who had done and suffered so much for his father's sake; besides they
had often exchanged greetings and a few words in the temple of Serapis.

"All that is in my power," said Glaucus--a man somewhat taller but not
so broadly built as his brother--when he had read the recluse's note and
when Klea had answered a number of questions, "all that is in my power
I will gladly do for you and your sister, for I do not forget all that
I owe to your father; still I cannot