the spectacle which a slender young Hellenic woman was
presenting to them.

The tall man with the magnificent black beard, who seemed fairly
devouring her with his eyes, must be the sculptor whom Ledscha commanded
him to capture.

To the rude pirate the Greek girl, who in a light, half-transparent
bombyx robe, was exhibiting herself to the eyes of the men upon a
pedestal draped with cloths, seemed bold and shameless.

Behind her stood two female attendants, holding soft white garments
ready, and a handsome Pontine boy with black, waving locks, who gazed up
at her waiting for her signs.

"Nearer," Ledscha ordered the pirate in a stifled voice, and he rowed
the boat noiselessly under the shadow of a willow on the bank. But the
skiff had scarcely been brought to a stop there when an elderly matron,
who shared the couch of an old Macedonian man of a distinguished,
soldierly appearance, called the name "Niobe."

The Hellene on the pedestal took a cloth from the hand of one of the
female attendants, and beckoned to the boy, who obediently drew through
his girdle the short blue chiton which hung only to his knees, and
sprang upon the platform.

There the Greek girl manipulated in some way the red tresses piled high
upon her head, and confined above the brow by a costly gold diadem,
flung the white linen fabric which the young slave handed to her over
her head, wound her arm around the shoulders of the raven-locked boy,
and drew him toward her with passionate tenderness. At the same time
she raised the end of the linen drapery with her left hand, spreading it
over him like a protecting canopy.

The mobile features which had just smiled so radiantly expressed mortal
terror, and the pirate, to whom even the name "Niobe" was unfamiliar,
looked around him for the terrible danger threatening the innocent
child, from which the woman on the pedestal was protecting it with
loving devotion.

The mortal terror of a mother robbed by a higher power of her child
could scarcely be more vividly depicted, and yet haughty defiance
hovered around her slightly pouting lips; the uplifted hands seemed
not only anxiously to defend, but also to defy an invisible foe with
powerless anger.

The pirate's eyes rested on this spectacle as if spellbound, and the
man who in Pontus had dragged hundreds of young creatures--boys and
girls--on his ship to sell them into slavery, never thinking of the
tears which he thereby caused in huts and mansio