mmons.

To Hermione, who in the calm after-years looked back on all this year of
agony and stress as on an unreal thing, one time always was stamped on
memory as no dream, but vivid, unforgetable,--these days of the great
evacuation. Up and down the pleasant plain country of the Mesogia to
southward, to the rolling highlands beyond Pentelicus and Parnes, to the
slumbering villages by Marathon, to the fertile farm-land by Eleusis, went
the proclaimers of ill-tidings.

"Quit your homes, hasten to Athens, take with you what you can, but
hasten, or stay as Xerxes's slaves."

For the next two days a piteous multitude was passing through the city. A
country of four hundred thousand inhabitants was to be swept clean and
left naked and profitless to the invader. Under Hermione's window, as she
gazed up and down the street, jostled the army of fugitives, women old and
young, shrinking from the bustle and uproar, grandsires on their staves,
boys driving the bleating goats or the patient donkeys piled high with
pots and panniers, little girls tearfully hugging a pet puppy or hen. But
few strong men were seen, for the fleet had not yet rounded Sunium to bear
the people away.

The well-loved villas and farmsteads were tenantless. They left the
standing grain, the ripening orchards, the groves of the sacred olives.
Men rushed for the last time to the shrines where their fathers had
prayed,--the temples of Theseus, Olympian Zeus, Dionysus, Aphrodite. The
tombs of the worthies of old, stretching out along the Sacred Way to
Eleusis, where Solon, Clisthenes, Miltiades, and many another bulwark of
Athens slept, had the last votive wreath hung lovingly upon them. And
especially men sought the great temple of the "Rock," to lift their hands
to Athena Polias, and vow awful vows of how harm to the Virgin Goddess
should be wiped away in blood.

So the throng passed through the city and toward the shore, awaiting the
fleet.

It came after eager watching. The whole fighting force of Athens and her
Corinthian, AEginetan, and other allies. Before the rest raced a stately
ship, the _Nausicaae_, her triple-oar bank flying faster than the spray.
The people crowded to the water's edge when the great trireme cast off her
pinnace and a well-known figure stepped therein.

"Themistocles is with us!"

He landed at Phaleron, the thousands greeted him as if he were a god. He
seemed their only hope--the Atlas upbearing all the fates of Athens. With