ir in fashion of a crown, and they were leaning on long
staves tipped by the design of a pine cone. They resembled the kings of
the Iliad gathered before Troy.

Actaeon noted among them a giant with black beard and short curling hair
which lay around his head like a mitre of wool. His enormous limbs, with
protuberant muscles and elastic sinews which seemed bursting with
strength, peeped from below the openings of the red mantle in which he
was wrapped.

"That is Theron," said the bowman, "the great priest of Hercules; a
prodigious man, who could conquer a crown in the Olympic games. He kills
a bull with a single blow on its neck."

Again the Greek thought he recognized among the people gathered near the
Senate portico, the Celtiberian shepherd, studying intently the gigantic
priest of Hercules; but the archer addressed Actaeon, compelling him to
turn his gaze away.

"The council is about to sit, and I must be at the foot of the steps
awaiting orders. Go, Actaeon, and tarry for me in the Forum. There you
will find my boy. Did you not say that you met him on the road? No doubt
he was with that slave girl who herds Sonnica's goats. Don't hesitate,
Actaeon; don't tell a falsehood. I guess it. Ah, that boy! That vagabond,
who, instead of working, races through the fields like a fugitive
slave!"

In spite of the grievousness with which the archer complained, a thrill
of tenderness was observable in his accent, the note of preference over
his other sons for that wandering and capricious artist who often
abandoned the paternal roof to roam about the port and through the
mountains for weeks at a time.

The two Greeks bade each other adieu, and Actaeon returned to the Forum,
not without thinking that he saw again, strolling about the Acropolis,
the mysterious Celtiberian shepherd. As he entered the porticos he heard
hisses and shouting; the crowds were agitated, laughing and jeering;
people rushed from the barber-shops and perfumeries. The Greek saw a
group of luxuriously dressed young men passing with scornful smiles
regardless of the tempest of hisses and sarcasm raised by their
presence.

They were the gallants of Saguntum; the rich youths who imitated the
fashions of the Athenian aristocracy, exaggerated by distance and by
their lack of taste. Actaeon also smiled, with the cynical smile of an
Athenian, as he observed the crudeness with which these young fops
copied their distant models.

At their head strode Lachar