ing a mistake upon this vital point.
"What need have I of a force to protect lands that are all within a
day's journey of the king's fortress? The idea of carrying weapons would
make all the slaves idle and quarrelsome. Leave them their spades and
their ploughs, and let them labour while the soldiers fight. How many
slaves have I now, Phraortes?"

"There were, at the last return, fourteen thousand seven hundred and
fifty-three men, ten thousand two hundred and sixteen women, and not
less than five thousand children. But I expect--"

"What can you do with so many?" asked Darius, turning sharply to the
queen.

"Many of them work in the carpet-looms," answered Phraortes. "The queen
receives fifty talents yearly from the sales of the carpets."

"All the carpets in the king's apartments are made in my looms," said
Atossa, with a smile. "I am a great merchant."

"I have no doubt I paid you dearly enough for them, too," said the king,
who was beginning to be weary of the examination. He had firmly expected
that either the Median agent, or the queen herself, would betray some
emotion at the mention of arming the slaves, for he imagined that if
Atossa had really planned any outbreak, she would undoubtedly have
employed the large force of men she had at her disposal, by finding them
weapons and promising them their liberty in the event of success.

He was disappointed at the appearance of the man Phraortes. He had
supposed him a strong, determined, man of imperious ways and turbulent
instincts, who could be easily led into revolution and sedition from the
side of his ambition. He saw before him the traditional cunning,
quick-witted merchant of Media, pale-faced and easily frightened; no
more capable of a daring stroke of usurpation than a Jewish pedlar of
Babylon. He was evidently a mere tool in the hands of the queen; and
Darius stamped impatiently upon the floor when he thought that he had
perhaps been deceived after all--that the queen had really written to
Phraortes simply on account of her property, and that there was no
revolution at all to be feared. Impulsive to the last degree, when the
king had read the letter to Phraortes, his first thought had been to see
the man for himself, to ask him a few questions and to put him at once
to death if he found him untruthful. The man had arrived, broken with
excessive fatigue and weak from the fearful journey; but under the very
eye of the king, he had nevertheless given a cle