hthouse. This indicated a bad
night, and again the boding sense of coming misfortune stole over him.
Yet he set to work swiftly and prudently, helping with his own hands
when occasion required.

Night closed in. Not a star was visible in the sky, and the air, chilled
by the north wind, grew so cold that Gorgias at last permitted his body
slave to wrap his cloak around him. While drawing the hood over his
head, he gazed at a procession of litters and men moving towards
Lochias.

Perhaps the Queen's children were returning home from some expedition.
But probably they were rather private citizens on their way to some
festival celebrating the victory; for every one now believed in a great
battle and a successful issue of the war. This was proved by the shouts
and cheers of the people, who, spite of the storm, were still moving to
and fro near the harbour.

The last of the torch-bearers had just passed Gorgias, and he had told
himself that a train of litters belonging to the royal family would not
move through the darkness so faintly lighted, when a single man, bearing
in his hand a lantern, whose flickering rays shone on his wrinkled
face, approached rapidly from the opposite direction. It was old Phryx,
Didymus's house slave, with whom the architect had become acquainted,
while the aged scholar was composing the inscription for the Odeum which
Gorgias had erected. The aged servant had brought him many alterations
of his master's first sketch, and Gorgias had reminded him of it the
previous day.

The workmen by whom the statues had been raised to the pedestal, amid
the bright glare of torches, to the accompaniment of a regular chant,
had just dropped the ropes, windlasses, and levers, when the architect
recognized the slave.

What did the old man want at so late an hour on this dark night? The
fall of the scaffold again returned to his mind.

Was the slave seeking for a member of the family? Did Helena need
assistance? He stopped the gray-haired man, who answered his question
with a heavy sigh, followed by the maxim, "Misfortunes come in pairs,
like oxen." Then he continued: "Yesterday there was great anxiety.
Today, when there was so much rejoicing on account of Barine, I thought
directly, 'Sorrow follows joy, and the second misfortune won't be spared
us.' And so it proved."

Gorgias anxiously begged him to relate what had happened, and the
old man, drawing nearer, whispered that the pupil and assistant of
Didymu