filled with thousands of lofty souls, united in this
supreme hour by one feeling and one purpose. She even fancied she could
hear the inspired and heartfelt strains of the enthusiasts who were
prepared to give their lives for the god of their fathers, that she
breathed the odor of incense and burnt sacrifices, that she saw the
chorus of youths and maidens, led by priests and dancing with solemn
grace in mazy circles round the flower-decked altars. There among the
elders who had gathered round Olympius to meditate devoutly on the
coming doom and on the inmost meaning of the mysteries--among the adepts
who were anxiously noting, in the observatories of the Serapeum, the
fateful courses of the stars, the swirling of the clouds and the flight
of birds, she would doubtless find her father; and the fresh wound bled
anew as she remembered that she was the bearer of news which must deeply
shock and grieve him. Still, no doubt, she would find him wrapped in
dignified readiness for the worst, sorrowing serenely for the doomed
world, and so her melancholy message would come to a prepared and
resigned heart.

She had no fear of the crowd of men she would find in the Serapeum.
Her father and Olympius were there to protect her, and Dame Herse, too,
would be a support and comfort; but even without those three, on such a
night as this--the last perhaps that they might ever see--she would have
ventured without hesitation among thousands, for she firmly believed
that every votary of the gods was awaiting his own end and the crash of
falling skies with devout expectancy, and perhaps with not less terror
than herself.

These were her thoughts as she and her guide stopped at a strong door.
This was presently opened and they found themselves in an underground
chamber, devoted to the mysteries of the worship of Serapis, in which
the adepts were required to go through certain severe ordeals before
they were esteemed worthy to be received into the highest order of the
initiated--the Esoterics. The halls and corridors which she now went
through, and which she had never before seen, were meagrely lighted with
lamps and torches, and all that met her eye filled her with reverent awe
while it excited her imagination. Everything, in fact--every room and
every image--was as unlike nature, and as far removed from ordinary
types as possible, in arrangement and appearance. After passing through
a pyramidal room, with triangular sides that sloped to a p