t insignificant monk in Asia Minor, whose fate would soon be
sealed--the only sharer of Theodora's secret, and therefore the only
person who could curb and bend that imperious nature. Hurrying into the
chamber where the visitors were waiting, he gave a sinister signal, only
too well known in those iron days. In an instant the black mutes in
attendance seized the old man and the boy, pushing them swiftly down a
passage and into a meaner portion of the palace, where the heavy smell
of luscious cooking proclaimed the neighbourhood of the kitchens. A side
corridor led to a heavily-barred iron door, and this in turn opened upon
a steep flight of stone steps, feebly illuminated by the glimmer of
wall lamps. At the head and foot stood a mute sentinel like an ebony
statue, and below, along the dusky and forbidding passages from which
the cells opened, a succession of niches in the wall were occupied by a
similar guardian. The unfortunate visitors were dragged brutally down a
number of stone-flagged and dismal corridors until they descended
another long stair which led so deeply into the earth that the damp
feeling in the heavy air and the drip of water all round showed that
they had come down to the level of the sea. Groans and cries, like those
of sick animals, from the various grated doors which they passed showed
how many there were who spent their whole lives in this humid and
poisonous atmosphere.

At the end of this lowest passage was a door which opened into a single
large vaulted room. It was devoid of furniture, but in the centre was a
large and heavy wooden board clamped with iron. This lay upon a rude
stone parapet, engraved with inscriptions beyond the wit of the eastern
scholars, for this old well dated from a time before the Greeks founded
Byzantium, when men of Chaldea and Ph[oe]nicia built with huge
unmortared blocks, far below the level of the town of Constantine. The
door was closed, and the eunuch beckoned to the slaves that they should
remove the slab which covered the well of death. The frightened boy
screamed and clung to the abbot, who, ashy-pale and trembling, was
pleading hard to melt the heart of the ferocious eunuch.

"Surely, surely, you would not slay the innocent boy!" he cried. "What
has he done? Was it his fault that he came here? I alone--I and Deacon
Bardas--are to blame. Punish us, if some one must indeed be punished. We
are old. It is to-day or to-morrow with us. But he is so young and so
be