onted by
two lanthorns which were held up within a few inches of his nose.

"Dondersteen!" he ejaculated loudly, and nearly dropped his
half-conscious and swaying burden on the ground.

"What is it now, Jakob?" queried a woman's voice peremptorily.

"I cannot see clearly, lady," replied one of the lanthorn-bearers--"two
men I think."

"Then do thy thoughts proclaim thee a liar, friend," said Diogenes
lightly; "there are three men here at this lady's service, though one is
sick, the other fat, and the third a mere beast of burden."

"Let me see them, Jakob," ordered the woman. "I believe they are the
same three men who...."

The lanthorn-bearers made way for the lady, still holding the lanthorns
up so that the light fell fully on the quaint spectacle presented by the
three philosophers. There was Socrates perched up aloft, his bird-like
face smeared with blood, his eyes rolling in their effort to keep open,
his thin back bent nearly double so that indeed he looked like a huge
plucked crow the worse for a fight, and perched on an eminence where he
felt none too secure. And below him his friend with broad shoulders
bending under the burden, his plumed hat shading his brow, his merry,
twinkling eyes fixed a little suspiciously on the four figures that
loomed out of the fog in front of him, his mocking lips ready framed for
a smile or an oath, his hands which supported the legs of poor wounded
Socrates struggling visibly toward the hilt of his sword. And peeping
round from behind him the short, rotund form of Pythagoras, crowned with
a tall sugar-loaf hat which obviously had never belonged to him until
now, for it perched somewhat insecurely above his flat, round face, with
the small, upturned nose slightly tinged with pink and the tiny eyes,
round and bright as new crowns.

Undoubtedly the sight was ludicrous in the extreme, and the woman who

looked on it now burst into a merry peal of laughter.

"O Maria! dost see them?" she said, turning to her companion, an elderly
woman in sober black gown and coif of tinsel lace. "Hast ever seen
anything so quaint?"

She herself was young, and in the soft light of the two lanthorns
appeared to the three philosophers to be more than passing fair.

"Socrates, thou malapert," said Diogenes sternly, "take my hat off my
head at once, and allow me to make obeisance to the lady, or I'll drop
thee incontinently on thy back."

Then, as Socrates half mechanically lifted the plumed