hat have you got for our
general?"

"For Aristeides."

The stranger was hoarse as a crow. He was pushing aside the spear and
forcing a packet into Hippon's hands. The latter, sorely puzzled, whistled
through his fingers. A moment more the locharch of the scouting division
and three comrades appeared.

"Why the alarm? Where's the enemy?"

"No enemy, but a madman. Find what he wants."

The locharch in earlier days had kept an oil booth in the Athens Agora and
knew the local celebrities as well as Phormio.

"Now, friend," he spoke, "your business, and shortly; we've no time for
chaffering."

"For Aristeides."

"The fourth time he's said it,--sheep!" cried Hippon, but as he spoke the
newcomer fell forward heavily, groaned once, and lay on the roadway silent
as the dead. The locharch drew forth the horn lantern he had masked under
his chalmys and leaned over the stranger. The light fell on the seal of
the packet gripped in the rigid fingers.

"Themistocles's seal," he cried, and hastily turned the fallen man's face
upward to the light, when the lantern almost dropped from his own hand.

"Glaucon the Alcmaeonid! Glaucon the Traitor who was dead! He or his shade
come back from Tartarus."

The four soldiers stood quaking like aspen, but their leader was of
stouter stuff. Never had his native Attic shrewdness guided him to more
purpose.

"Ghost, traitor, what not, this man has run himself all but to death. Look
on his face. And Themistocles does not send a courier for nothing. This
packet is for Aristeides, and to Aristeides take it with speed."

Hippon seized the papyrus. He thought it would fade out of his hands like
a spectre. It did not. The sentinel dropped his spear and ran breathless
toward Plataea, where he knew was his general.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE COUNCIL OF MARDONIUS

Never since Salamis had Persian hopes been higher than that night. What if
the Spartans were in the field at last, and the incessant skirmishing had
been partly to Pausanias's advantage? Secure in his fortified camp by the
Asopus, Mardonius could confidently wait the turn of the tide. His light
Tartar cavalry had cut to pieces the convoys bringing provisions to the
Hellenes. Rumour told that Pausanias's army was ill fed, and his captains
were at loggerheads. Time was fighting for Mardonius. A joyful letter he
had sent to Sardis the preceding morning: "Let the king have p