"What is this? three palaces around Khamon at twelve kesitahs a month!
Make it twenty! I do not want to be eaten up by the rich."

The Steward of the stewards, after a long salutation, resumed:

"Lent to Tigillas until the end of the season two kikars at three per
cent., maritime interest; to Bar-Malkarth fifteen hundred shekels on the
security of thirty slaves. But twelve have died in the salt-marshes."

"That is because they were not hardy," said the Suffet, laughing. "No
matter! if he is in want of money, satisfy him! We should always lend,
and at different rates of interest, according to the wealth of the
individual."

Then the servant hastened to read all that had been brought in by the
iron-mines of Annaba, the coral fisheries, the purple factories, the
farming of the tax on the resident Greeks, the export of silver to
Arabia, where it had ten times the value of gold, and the captures of
vessels, deduction of a tenth being made for the temple of the goddess.
"Each time I declared a quarter less, Master!" Hamilcar was reckoning
with the balls; they rang beneath his fingers.

"Enough! What have you paid?"

"To Stratonicles of Corinth, and to three Alexandrian merchants, on
these letters here (they have been realised), ten thousand Athenian
drachmas, and twelve Syrian talents of gold. The food for the crews,
amounting to twenty minae a month for each trireme--"

"I know! How many lost?"

"Here is the account on these sheets of lead," said the Steward. "As to
the ships chartered in common, it has often been necessary to throw the
cargo into the seas, and so the unequal losses have been divided among
the partners. For the ropes which were borrowed from the arsenals, and
which it was impossible to restore, the Syssitia exacted eight hundred
kesitahs before the expedition to Utica."

"They again!" said Hamilcar, hanging his head; and he remained for a
time as if quite crushed by the weight of all the hatreds that he could
feel upon him. "But I do not see the Megara expenses?"

Abdalonim, turning pale, went to another set of pigeon-holes, and
took from them some planchettes of sycamore wood strung in packets on
leathern strings.

Hamilcar, curious about these domestic details, listened to him and
grew calm with the monotony of the tones in which the figures were
enumerated. Abdalonim became slower. Suddenly he let the wooden sheets
fall to the ground and threw himself flat on his face with his arms
stretched