fashion, as he answered:

"It is a hundred and fifty farsangs[3] to Ecbatana. By the king's relays
I can ride there in six days, and I can bring back Phraortes in six days
more--if he die not of the riding," he added, with a grim smile.

[Footnote 3: Between five and six hundred English miles. South
American postilions at the present day ride six hundred miles a
week for a bare living.]

"Is he old, or young? Fat, or meagre?" asked the king, laughing.

"He is a man of forty years, neither thin nor fat--a good horseman in
his way, but not as we are."

"Bind him to his horse if he falls off from weariness. And tell him he
is summoned to appear before me. Tell him the business brooks no delay.
Auramazda be with thee and bring thee help. Go with speed."

Again Zoroaster turned and in a moment he was gone. He had sworn to be
the king's faithful servant, and he would keep his oath, cost what it
might, though it was bitterness to him to leave Nehushta without a word.
He bethought him as he hastily put on light garments for the journey,
that he might send her a letter, and he wrote a few words upon a piece
of parchment, and folded it together. As he passed by the entrance of
the garden on his way to the stables, he looked about for one of
Nehushta's slaves; but seeing none, he beckoned to one of the Greek
tirewomen, and giving her a piece of gold, bade her take the little
scroll to Nehushta, the Hebrew princess, who was in the gardens. Then he
went quickly on, and mounting the best horse in the king's stables,
galloped at a break-neck pace down the steep incline. In five minutes he
had crossed the bridge, and was speeding over the straight, dusty road
toward Nineveh. In a quarter of an hour, a person watching him from the
palace would have seen his flying figure disappearing as in a tiny speck
of dust far out upon the broad, green plain.

But the Greek slave-woman stood with Zoroaster's letter in her hand and
held the gold piece he had given her in her mouth, debating what she
should do. She was one of the queen's women, as it chanced, and she
immediately reflected that she might turn the writing to some better
account than by delivering it to Nehushta, whom she had seen for a
moment that morning as she passed, and whose dark Hebrew face displeased
the frivolous Greek, for some hidden reason. She thought of giving the
scroll to the queen, but then she reflected that she did not know what
it contained. The