loud cry of pain and terror startled the group.

'Oh, spare me! spare me! I am but a child, I am blind--is not that
punishment enough?'

'O Pallas! I know that voice, it is my poor flower-girl!' exclaimed
Glaucus, and he darted at once into the quarter whence the cry rose.

He burst the door; he beheld Nydia writhing in the grasp of the
infuriate hag; the cord, already dabbled with blood, was raised in the
air--it was suddenly arrested.

'Fury!' said Glaucus, and with his left hand he caught Nydia from her
grasp; 'how dare you use thus a girl--one of your own sex, a child! My
Nydia, my poor infant!'

'Oh? is that you--is that Glaucus?' exclaimed the flower-girl, in a tone
almost of transport; the tears stood arrested on her cheek; she smiled,
she clung to his breast, she kissed his robe as she clung.

'And how dare you, pert stranger! interfere between a free woman and her
slave. By the gods! despite your fine tunic and your filthy perfumes, I
doubt whether you are even a Roman citizen, my mannikin.'

'Fair words, mistress--fair words!' said Clodius, now entering with
Lepidus. 'This is my friend and sworn brother; he must be put under
shelter of your tongue, sweet one; it rains stones!'

'Give me my slave!' shrieked the virago, placing her mighty grasp on the
breast of the Greek.

'Not if all your sister Furies could help you,' answered Glaucus. 'Fear
not, sweet Nydia; an Athenian never forsook distress!'

'Holla!' said Burbo, rising reluctantly, 'What turmoil is all this about
a slave? Let go the young gentleman, wife--let him go: for his sake the
pert thing shall be spared this once.' So saying, he drew, or rather
dragged off, his ferocious help-mate.

'Methought when we entered,' said Clodius, 'there was another man
present?'

'He is gone.'

For the priest of Isis had indeed thought it high time to vanish.

'Oh, a friend of mine! a brother cupman, a quiet dog, who does not love
these snarlings,' said Burbo, carelessly. 'But go, child, you will tear
the gentleman's tunic if you cling to him so tight; go, you are
pardoned.'

'Oh, do not--do not forsake me!' cried Nydia, clinging yet closer to the
Athenian.

Moved by her forlorn situation, her appeal to him, her own innumerable
and touching graces, the Greek seated himself on one of the rude chairs.
He held her on his knees--he wiped the blood from her shoulders with his
long hair--he kissed the tears from her cheeks--he whispered to her a
t