on yourself," cried Myrtilus. "I
know you; nay, perhaps I see farther into your soul than you yourself.
By ingenious fetters you force the mighty winged intellect to content
itself within the narrow world of reality. But the time when you will
yourself rend the bonds and find the divinity you have lost, will come,
and then, with your mighty power once more free, you will outstrip most
of us, and me also if I live to see it."

Then he pressed his hand upon his rattling chest and walked slowly
to the couch; but Hermon followed, helped him to lie down, and with
affectionate solicitude arranged his pillows.

"It is nothing," Myrtilus said soothingly, after a few minutes' silence.
"My undermined strength has been heavily taxed to-day. The Olympians
know how calmly I await death. It ends all things. Nothing will be left
of me except the ashes, to which you will reduce my body, and what you
call 'possession.' But even this can no longer belong to me after death,
because I shall then be no more, and the idea of possession requires a
possessor. My estate, too, is now disposed of. I have just been to the
notary, and sixteen witnesses--neither more nor less--have signed my
will according to the custom of this ceremonious country. There, now,
if you please, go before me, and let me stay here alone a little while.
Remember me to Daphne and the Pelusinians. I will join you in an hour."

CHAPTER X.

"When the moon is over Pelican Island." How often Ledscha had repeated
this sentence to herself while Hermon was detained by Daphne and her
Pelusinian guests!

When she entered the boat after nightfall she exclaimed hopefully, sure
of her cause, "When the moon is over Pelican Island he will come."

Her goal was quickly reached in the skiff; the place selected for the
nocturnal meeting was a familiar one to her.

The pirates had remained absent from it quite two years. Formerly
they had often visited the spot to conceal their arms and booty on the
densely wooded island. The large papyrus thicket on the shore also hid
boats from spying eyes, and near the spot where Ledscha landed was a
grassy seat which looked like an ordinary resting place, but beneath
it the corsairs had built a long, walled passage, that led to the other
side of the island, and had enabled many a fugitive to vanish from the
sight of pursuers, as though the earth had swallowed them.

"When the moon is over the island," Ledscha repeated after she had
waited m