d, "I know full well that the clouds hanging over
us are very black, and I cannot even see them clearly, because you show
them at such a distance. Yet I feel that they threaten us with sore
tribulation. But, after all, what harm can they do us, if we only keep
close together, we two old people and the children of the children whom
Hades rent from us? We need only to grow old to perceive that life has a
head with many faces. The ugly one of to-day can last no longer than you
can keep that deeply furrowed brow. But you need not coerce yourself for
my sake, husband. Let it be so. I need merely close my eyes to see how
smooth and beautiful it was in youth, and how pleasant it will look when
better days say, 'Here we are!'"

Didymus, with a mournful smile, kissed her grey hair and shouted into
her left ear, which was a little less deaf than the other:

"How young you are still, wife!"

CHAPTER X.

The tempest swept howling from the north across the island of Pharos,
and the shallows of Diabathra in the great harbour of Alexandria. The
water, usually so placid, rose in high waves, and the beacon on the
lighthouse of Sastratus sent the rent abundance of its flames with
hostile impetuosity towards the city. The fires in the pitch-pans
and the torches on the shore sometimes seemed on the point of being
extinguished, at others burst with a doubly brilliant blaze through the
smoke which obscured them.

The royal harbour, a fine basin which surrounded in the form of a
semicircle the southern part of the Lochias and a portion of the
northern shore of the Bruchium, was brightly illuminated every night;
but this evening there seemed to be an unusual movement among the lights
on its western shore, the private anchorage of the royal fleet.

Was it the storm that stirred them? No. How could the wind have set
one torch in the place of another, and moved lights or lanterns in a
direction opposite to its violent course? Only a few persons, however,
perceived this; for, though joyous anticipation or anxious fears urged
many thither, who would venture upon the quay on such a tempestuous
night? Besides, no one would have found admittance to the royal port,
which was closed on all sides. Even the mole which, towards the west,
served as the string to the bow of land surrounding it, had but a single
opening and--as every one knew--that was closed by a chain in the same
way as the main entrance to the harbour between the Pharos and Alv