echoed gaily
up from the hold, and, obedient to quick words of command, the seamen
were spreading the sails.

The voyage began with a favourable wind. As Hermon looked back for the
last time, the flat, desolate tongue of land appeared like a line of
gray mist in the southeastern horizon; but over it hovered, like a
gloomy thundercloud, the flocks of vultures and ravens, whose numbers
were constantly increasing. Their greedy screaming could still be heard,
though but faintly, yet the eye could no longer distinguish anything
in the fast-vanishing abode of horror, save the hovering whirl of dark
spots--ravens and vultures, vultures and ravens.

Whatever human life had moved there yesterday, now rested from bloody
greed for booty, after victory and defeat, mortal terror, fury, and
despair.

Eumedes pointed out the quiet grave by the sea to his parents, saying:
"The King's command is fulfilled. Not even the one man who is usually
spared to carry the news remains out of the four thousand."

"I thank you," exclaimed Alexander's gray-haired comrade, shaking his
son's right hand, but Thyone laid her hand on Hermon's arm, saving:
"Where the birds are darkening the air behind us lies buried what
incensed Nemesis against you. You must leave the soil of Egypt. True,
it is said that to live in foreign lands, far from the beloved home,
darkens the existence; yet Pergamus, too, is Grecian soil, and there
I see the two noblest of stars illumine your path with their pure
light-art and love."

And his old friend's premonition was fulfilled.

.......................

The story of Arachne is ended. It closed on the Nile. Hermon's new life
began in Pergamus.

As Daphne's husband, under the same roof with the wonderfully
invigorated Myrtilus, his Uncle Archias, and faithful Bias, Hermon found
in the new home what had hovered before the blind man as the fairest
goal of existence in art, love, and friendship.

He did not long miss the gay varied life of Alexandria, because he found
a rich compensation for it, and because Pergamus, too, was a rapidly
growing city, whose artistic decoration was inferior to no other in
Greece.

Of the numerous works which Hermon completed in the service of the first
three art-loving rulers of the new Pergamenian kingdom, Philetaerus,
Eumenes, and Attalus, nothing was preserved except the head of a Gaul.
This noble masterpiece proves how faithful Hermon remained to truth,
which he had early c