displeasing to more than one high-minded Aryan nobleman. But the king had
spoken, and was to be obeyed. Mardonius rode back to the hillock at the
mouth of the pass, where the Hellenes had retired--after their spears were
broken and they could resist only with swords, stones, or naked hands--for
the final death grip.

The slain Barbarians lay in heaps. The Greeks had been crushed at the end,
not in close strife, but by showers of arrows. Mardonius dismounted and
went with a few followers among the dead. Plunderers were already at their
harpy work of stripping the slain. The bow-bearer chased them angrily
away. He oversaw the task which his attendants performed as quickly as
possible. Their toil was not quite fruitless. Three or four Thespians were
still breathing, a few more of the helots who had attended Leonidas's
Spartans, but not one of the three hundred but seemed dead, and that too
with many wounds.

Snofru, Mardonius's Egyptian body-servant, rose from the ghastly work and
grinned with his ivories at his master.

"All the rest are slain, Excellency."

"You have not searched that pile yonder."

Snofru and his helpers resumed their toil. Presently the Egyptian dragged
from a bloody heap a body, and raised a yell. "Another one--he breathes!"

"There's life in him. He shall not be left to the crows. Take him forth
and lay him with the others that are living."

It was not easy to roll the three corpses from their feebly stirring
comrade. When this was done, the stricken man was still encased in his
cuirass and helmet. They saw only that his hands were slim and white.

"With care," ordered the humane bow-bearer, "he is a young man. I heard
Leonidas took only older men on his desperate venture. Here, rascals, do
you not see he is smothered in that helmet? Lift him up, unbuckle the
cuirass. By Mithra, he has a strong and noble form! Now the helmet--uncover
the face."

But as the Egyptian did so, his master uttered a shout of mingled
wonderment and terror.

"Glaucon--Prexaspes, and in Spartan armour!"

What had befallen Glaucon was in no wise miraculous. He had borne his part
in the battle until the Hellenes fell back to the fatal hillock. Then in
one of the fierce onsets which the Barbarians attempted before they had
recourse to the simpler and less glorious method of crushing their foes by
arrow fire, a Babylonian's war club had dashed upon his helmet. The stout
bronze had saved him from wound, but under the