is this that the king hath done
to me? Whither will he take her from me?"

"Let not my lord be troubled," said Zoroaster, earnestly, for he was
moved by the sudden grief of the prophet. "Let not my lord be troubled.
It is but for a space, for a few weeks; and thy kinsfolk will be with
thee again, and I also."

"A space, a few weeks! What is a space to thee, child, or a week that
thou shouldest regard it? But I am old and full of years. It may be, if
now thou takest my daughter Nehushta from me, that I shall see her face
no more, neither thine, before I go hence and return not. Go to! Thou
art young, but I am now nigh unto a hundred years old."

"Nevertheless, if it be the will of the Great King, I must accomplish
this thing," answered the young man. "But I will swear by thy head and
by mine that there shall no harm happen to the young princess; and if
anything happen to her that is evil, may the Lord do so to me and more
also. Behold, I have sworn; let not my lord be troubled any more."

But the prophet bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. Aged
and childless, Zoroaster and Nehushta were to him children, and he loved
them with his whole soul. Moreover, he knew the Persian Court, and he
knew that if once they were taken into the whirl and eddy of its
intrigue and stirring life, they would not return to Ecbatana; or
returning, they would be changed and seem no more the same. He was
bitterly grieved and hurt at the thought of such a separation, and in
the grand simplicity of his greatness he felt no shame at shedding
tears for them. Zoroaster himself, in the pride of his brilliant youth,
was overcome with pain at the thought of quitting the sage who had been
a father to him for thirty years. He had never been separated from
Daniel save for a few months at a time during the wars of Cambyses; at
six-and-twenty years of age he had been appointed to the high position
of captain of the fortress of Ecbatana; since which time he had enjoyed
the closest intercourse with the prophet, his master.

Zoroaster was a soldier by force of circumstances, and he wore his
gorgeous arms with matchless grace, but there were two things that, with
him, went before his military profession, and completely eclipsed it in
importance.

From his earliest youth he had been the pupil of Daniel, who had
inspired him with his own love of the mystic lore to which the prophet
owed so much of his singular success in the service of the As