owd of white-robed men, who surged together in their
sudden fear, like a white-crested wave heaved up from the deep by a
fierce wind.

Nehushta still held Zoroaster's hand and stared wildly upon the helpless
priests. Her one thought was to save the man she loved, but she saw well
enough that it was too late. Nevertheless she appealed to the priests.

"Can none of you save him?" she cried.

Foremost in the little crowd was a stern, dark man--the same who had
been the high priest before Zoroaster came, the same who had first
hurled defiance at the intruder, and then had given him his whole
allegiance. He spoke out loudly:

"We will save him and thee if we are able," he cried in brave enthusiasm
for his chief. "We will take you between us and open the doors, and it
may be that we can fight our way out--though we are all slain, he may be
saved." He would have laid hold on Zoroaster, and there was not one of
the priests who would not have laid down his life in the gallant
attempt. But Zoroaster gently put him back.

"Ye cannot save me, for my hour is come," he said, and a radiance of
unearthly glory stole upon his features, so that he seemed transfigured
and changed before them all. "The foe are as a thousand men against one.
Here we must die like men, and like priests of the Lord before His
altar."

The thundering at the doors continued to echo through the whole temple,
almost drowning every other sound as it came; and the yells of the
infuriated besiegers rose louder and louder between.

Zoroaster's voice rang out clear and strong and the band of priests
gathered more and more closely about him. Nehushta still held his hand
tightly between her own, and, pale as death, she looked up to him as he
spoke. The little Syrian girl stood, beside her mistress, very quite and
grave.

"Hear me, ye priests of the Lord," said Zoroaster. "We are doomed men
and must surely die, though we know not by whose hand we perish. Now,
therefore, I beseech you to think not of this death which we must suffer
in our mortal bodies, but to open your eyes to the things which are not
mortal and which perish not eternally. For man is but a frail and
changing creature as regards his mortality, seeing that his life is not
longer than the lives of other created things, and he is delicate and
sickly and exposed to manifold dangers from his birth. But the soul of
man dieth not, neither is there any taint of death in it, but it liveth
for ever and is