"And whose slave are you?" demanded Agias, well pleased to be out of
the adventure.

"I'm Sesostris, servant of Pratinas the Greek."

Agias pricked up his ears. "And you live--"

"In the top story of this tenement;" and Sesostris tried to pick up
the hamper.

"Oh!" laughed his rescuer, "you must let me save you that trouble. I
will carry up the basket. Your master is a brute to pile on such
loads."

Sesostris again fawned his gratitude, and Agias, with quickened wits
and eyes alert, toiled up the dark stairway, and found himself at the
top of the building. He had "entered the enemy's country." The Ethiop
might not have been open to bribes, but he might be unlocked through
friendship, and Agias never needed all his senses more than now. They
had reached the topmost flight of stairs, and Sesostris had stopped as
if embarrassed whether to invite his deliverer in to enjoy some
hospitality, or say him farewell. Then of a sudden from behind the
closed door came a clear, sweet, girlish voice, singing, in Greek:--

"O Aitne, mother mine: A grotto fair
Scooped in the rocks have I, and there I keep
All that in dreams man pictures! Treasured there
Are multitudes of she-goats and of sheep,
Swathed in whose wool from top to toe I sleep."

It was an idyl of Theocritus, very well known by Agias, and without
the least hesitation he took up the strain, and continued:--

"The fire boils my pot; with oak or beech
Is piled,--dry beech logs when the snow lies deep.
And storm and sunshine, I disdain them each
As toothless sires a nut, when broth is in their reach."[98]

[98] Calverly's translation.

Agias paused. There was a silence, then a giggle behind the door, and
it half opened, and out peered the plump and rosy face of the young
girl we have heard Pratinas salute as his niece, Artemisia. The moment
she caught sight of the rather manly form of Agias, the door started
to close with a slam, but the latter thrust out his foot, blocked the
door, and forced an entrance.

"_Eleleu!_" cried Agias, pushing into a small but neatly furnished
room. "What have we here? Do the muses sing in Subura? Has Sappho
brought hither her college of poetesses from Lesbos?"

"_Ai!_" exclaimed Artemisia, drawing back, "who are you? You're
dreadfully rude. I never saw you before."

"Nor I you;" replied Agias, in capital good humour, "but that is no
reason why I should take my eyes away from your pretty little face.