lling, wagering, making merry. All
Greece seemed to have sent its wares to be disposed of at the Isthmia.
Democrates idled along, now glancing at the huckster who displayed his
painted clay dolls and urged the sightseers to remember the little ones at
home. A wine-seller thrust a sample cup of a choice vintage under the
Athenian's nose, and vainly adjured him to buy. Thessalian easy-chairs,
pottery, slaves kidnapped from the Black Sea, occupied one booth after
another. On a pulpit before a bellowing crowd a pair of marionettes were
rolling their eyes and gesticulating, as a woman pulled the strings.

But there were more exalted entertainments. A rhapsodist stood on a pine
stump chanting in excellent voice Alcaeus's hymn to Apollo. And more
willingly the orator stopped on the edge of a throng of the better sort,
which listened to a man of noble aspect reading in clear voice from his
scroll.

"AEschylus of Athens," whispered a bystander. "He reads choruses of certain
tragedies he says he will perfect and produce much later."

Democrates knew the great dramatist well, but what he read was new--a "Song
of the Furies" calling a terrific curse upon the betrayer of friendship.
"Some of his happiest lines," meditated Democrates, walking away, to be
held a moment by the crowd around Lamprus the master-harpist. But now,
feeling that he had dallied long enough, the orator turned his back on the
two female acrobats who were swinging on a trapeze and struck down a long,
straight road which led toward the distant cone of Acro-Corinthus. First,
however, he turned on Bias, who all the time had been accompanying,
dog-fashion.

"You say he is waiting at Hegias's inn?"

"Yes, master. It's by the temple of Bellerophon, just as you begin to
enter the city."

"Good! I don't want to ask the way. Now catch this obol and be off."

The boy snatched the flying coin and glided into the crowd.

Democrates walked briskly out of the glare of the torches, then halted to
slip the hood of his cloak up about his face.

"The road is dark, but the wise man shuns accidents," was his reflection,
as he strode in the direction pointed by Bias.

The way was dark. No moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in
Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long
avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some
tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high
columns of a temple, and cl