The Perilous Seat

CONTENTS

BOOK I AT THE PYTHIAN FESTIVAL

CHAPTER I DRYAS WINS THE PRIZE

Dryas, the young Delphian, finished his song. As he did so he leaped impulsively to the sheer edge of the temple platform, leaning forward in the very attitude of the Archer God. The song was to Apollo. For a moment he seemed to be the young Apollo himself.

The final note was scarce heard for the surge of applause which met it. The people pelted the boy with flowers—snatched off their own garlands to throw to him—until he stood ankle deep in the bloom. He was blushing, shy, now that his song was finished. Awestruck, too, for he heard everywhere the shout:

“The Prize! The Prize!”

Thus ended the first day of the Pythian festival at Delphi. The crowds poured down through the Precinct, a very tumult of colour and motion. White-robed priests, purple-cloaked kings, Sybarites in cloth of gold, young athletes beautiful as the sunlight in which they moved; and upon every man’s head, rich or poor, his crown of flowers.

How freely they talked, how happily gave themselves to laughter! The truce of God was upon them—that peace which Apollo imposed upon the passionate, warring Greeks at festival time. Delphi itself, forbidding amid its beetling cliffs, seemed to lose sternness at this festival. Out on the far-seen hillsides were the booths and bright-coloured tents of the visitors, the flash and glitter of things brought for sale. Even yet crowds of pilgrims were arriving, swarming up the steep winding roads as the bees were fabled of old to have swarmed thither to build the first temple in Delphi.

Dryas, his father, Nikander, and his brother, Lycophron, came down through the stirring Precinct, perhaps the happiest hearts of all the multitude.

The prize at Delphi! It was an immortal honour. The noblest poets of Greece would write hymns in his praise. Dryas’s whole town would bask in the honour of it. Dryas’s statue in bronze would be set up near the Precinct gate, and in future years his sons and sons’ sons would recount the victory.

Neighbours, kinsfolk, strangers, halted them on their homeward way. No man in Hellas was too exalted to pause in humility and delight to greet the young victor with the crown yet fresh upon his head. But it was to the father, Nikander, rather than to Dryas that they addressed themselves, lingering to catch if it were but a reflection of the surprised joy in that father-face.

Nikander walked holding his boy’s hand, or touching his shoulder as he presented him to some famous man.

“You liked it?” he would say, his sensitive face flushing almost as Dryas’s own. “You liked the song? Yes, I, too, enjoyed it—that stern opening—the Dorian mode. It was as new in my hearing as in yours. The dear lad kept it so.”

And Dryas’s answering look showed the father’s praise to be the most precious of all. It was no usual affection which bound these two together.

And now Pindar, the greatest poet, met them, outstretching both his hands.

“Nikander! Dryas! Kairos bless you both! You are tasting the heady joy of victory!”

“Eating victory rather,” put in the elder brother, Lycophron, with a rough laugh. “Feasting on it in courses I should say.”

At his father’s hurt look he stopped and laid his hand upon the father’s shoulder.

“Tut,” he said, “I meant no harm.” Then he turned to the poet: “Pindar, I hope you are coming to us to-night, speaking of feasts; a symposium in Dryas’s honour.”

Pindar frowned at the young man’s forwardness but assented, then smiled again as he turned to Dryas.

“It was almost as good as your father’s victor song years ago.”

“Oh, better, much better,” urged Nikander. At which Pindar moved onward, laughing, shaking his head. A lovable man, Pindar.

They arrived finally at their own door. All the slaves were there bowing and curtseying, Medon, the old pedagogue, at their head. He peered up eagerly to see if the boy really wore the laurel crown and, at sight of it, trembled visibly with joy.

“Little Dryas, little Dryas,” he crooned, all love.

Nikander must needs stop to rehearse all his happiness to the old servant. And who so glad to hear as Medon!

“All Dryas’s songs have been good,” Nikander finished. “But, oh, this one to-day is in a new class! Do you know what the rascal did, Medon? Brought out an utterly new poem, different from any I ever heard. Imagine my amazement when he started out—and my delight!”

“Yes, Master, yes!” assented Medon.

As they talked, they had been moving slowly through the andron and now entered the women’s court.

Melantho, the mother, hearing them enter, came running down the stair to fold her son in her arms. Baltè, the old nurse, hobbled up. Nerea, Clito, and other slave girls came and kissed the hem of his robe.

But Nikander missed one member of the household.

“Where is Eleutheria?” he asked.

Then he caught sight of her standing in the far corner of the court—his daughter, tall, delicately flushed with that air between shyness and pride which is common to all new-flowering things.

“Daughter,” said Nikander, “we have come home with the crown!”

She bowed her dark head, fingering her distaff with its tangled threads.

“Come, my dear,” said Nikander, snapping his fingers to hasten her. “Come, greet your brother victor.”

Then she looked up—a face full of some strange startling emotion.

“No,” she half whispered.

“No? What on earth do you mean?”

“I cannot,” she spoke sharply. “I cannot praise him.”

“You are ill,” said Nikander, going to her. Indeed he feared some fever had deprived her of her wits.

“No, I am not ill.”

“Then what madness is this? What nonsense!” Nikander could hardly believe in this sudden quarrel darkening the brightness of his day of joy.

Dryas crossed over to her. He was ever the peacemaker.

“What has happened, Theria?” He began gently.

Her great eyes looked fearfully at him.

“You know perfectly well what has happened. How dare you ask!”

Nikander was now thoroughly angry.

“Theria,” he said, “greet your brother at once or go to your room. Your whims are unbearable.”

“Theria,” began Dryas again. But at his urging voice her anger took flame.

“I won’t praise you!” she cried wildly. “You know the song is mine, mine. I made it myself.”

“Great gods!” laughed Lycophron. “Here’s a pother for you!”

“No pother at all,” spoke Dryas quickly. “Who’ll believe her?”

“Nobody, nobody, my son,” sounded Nikander’s deep voice. “Now, Theria, go! I shall punish you myself for this!”

Here Melantho lifted horrified hands. “What jealousy, Theria! Shame on you! Shame!”

Theria had already reached the stair-foot, but at this word she faced them again.

“I am not jealous, I can prove that I made it,” she said, her voice suddenly clear. “I can sing my song.”

As at sacrilege, Nikander answered:

“Indeed you will do no such thing. Do you suppose I would allow that perfect creation to be caricatured by you?”

“Father, she heard me sing it,” thus Dryas, pale with the hurt Theria had given. “She has a perfect memory.”

“My dear boy, do you suppose the matter needs argument?”

“Oh, let her try. Why not?” came the heavy voice of Lycophron. “Then we can finish the scene with a good laugh, anyway.”

“You will not laugh at me,” cried out Theria. “By Hermes, you will not laugh!” The look in her face, suddenly visionary and unafraid, found response in an unexpected quarter.

“Oh, let her try.” Lycophron spoke in a different tone. “Give the poor child a chance.”

“Surely you need no proof,” said the father.

“Be damned if I don’t,” responded the elder brother.

“Then have your proof. It will need few moments.”

Nikander swiftly took the lyre from Dryas’s slave and gave it into Theria’s hand. The girl received it with an almost hungry eagerness as though the song within her burned for expression. Every vestige of anger died from her. Something from within seemed to sweep her up into a mobile erectness, holding her delicately steady as a flame is held aloft.

She struck a deep chord from the lyre upon her hip and sang. To their astonishment, it was not Dryas’s song though haunted ever and again with bits of the Dryas melody. She tossed the melody from grave to gay with ease and in the changes swayed softly.

At this point the rhythm with an increasing purposeful tread marched into the very tune of Dryas. The ancient story of Apollo slaying the Python-snake and winning the place of the Oracle from which to speak to men. The song was greatly enhanced by its prelude:

To the end she sang it. Not with Dryas’s sensitive handling but with a dramatic power, possessive, from within, making it inalienably her own.

Then she seemed to waken. She looked around. Her father stood with bowed head and hidden face. Melantho was weeping. Lycophron motioned a slave to shut the door lest someone come upon them, and Dryas sat gazing at the ground with an expression of misery and defeat which scattered the last vestige of Theria’s creative joy.

Suddenly she would have given worlds not to have sung. All kept silence as if they were all guilty. And like a guilty thing, Theria gave the lyre back to the slave and went up the stair.

CHAPTER II PARENTAL JUSTICE

Theria was gone. Yet in the room the awkward silence held. Then by some hidden sympathy Nikander’s hand beckoned to Dryas and Dryas himself started forward at the same moment.

“I wanted,” faltered Dryas, “oh, I wanted you to be proud.”

“I would have been proud anyway,” said Nikander loyally. Dryas began to sob.

“Son, why did you deceive me? There was no need. I would never have told the judges.”

“I don’t care for the judges. It was you—you!”

With sorrowful affection Nikander kissed him, then went slowly up the stair to Theria’s room.

He found her pacing up and down the narrow place. She was talking aloud.

“To take away my song! It wasn’t fair. No! To take away my song!”

Nikander spoke passionately: “Theria, this was the happiest day of my life and you have made it the most sorrowful.”

“Father!” she cried. “Father!”

She stood instantly still. Tears were running down her face. “Oh, I was sorry the minute I had done it. There was no use to tell and it only gave pain to everyone.”

Wistfully she tried to take his hand. Like most children, she had never told him how intensely she loved him.

“I cannot understand, Theria, why you would give your song to Dryas and then at a crucial moment snatch it back again. Dryas has done wrong, but your wrong is sheer cruelty.”

“But, Father——” she began. Then she stopped. She had done enough harm for one day.

She could not tell him that she had never given the song, but that Dryas had taken it against her will. Dryas had come to her one morning with a song of his own. Theria knew at once that it would never win the prize. They had talked it over, trying to mend it.

That afternoon her own song had flashed upon her. It was, as such flashes are apt to be, the culmination of long striving and dreaming. And for days afterward she had worked and perfected it. Then a week before the Pythian festival she had taken the song to Dryas and had sung it for him. Of course she was willing to give it to him. It did not occur to her but that Dryas would share with her the honour of it, at least in their own home. This Dryas had refused to do. They had quarrelled, and, at the end, Dryas had flatly told her that since she taught him the song he would take it for his own, whether she willed or no. He had thought she would never dare to tell. But now she had told, and the result was this misery.

“Theria,” said her father wearily, “how did it ever occur to you to write a song?”

“It was just as I told in the singing, Father. I was spinning alone in the spinning-room and the Muse struck across my mind. She would not let me go. The words hurried before I could catch up with them; a new chord waited for every chord I struck.”

Nikander was for a moment awed. He believed in the Muse; no mere poetic figment was she. She was an accepted goddess, and even thus was she wont to act.

“But you must have studied and worked,” he said. “You must have had help.”

“Medon has helped me a little. He taught me the scales, and I have taken your book rolls and made him show me how to read. Do not be angry with Medon. He is only a slave and I commanded him. It was really myself did it. I worked very hard.”

Suddenly it seemed to her that some invisible door, which ever for her, a girl, had always stood ajar, had quietly and irrevocably closed. She had the instinct to turn this way and that for escape. But there was no escape.

“What shall I do?” she moaned. “Oh, what shall I do?” It seemed as though her father, so intelligent, so quick to help all comers to the Oracle, surely he would know some help for her.

“My dear Theria,” said Nikander, “there is much for you to do here at home. You have everything, why are you unhappy?”

She bowed her head without answer. There was so much to say that she could say nothing at all.

“Theria,” he went on kindly, “I must tell you that only yesterday by your mother’s advice I did something for you. I see now how necessary it was.”

Her lips parted as if in fear.

“I have offered you in marriage,” said Nikander, “to Timon for his eldest son Theras. Timon has accepted. I am delighted with the alliance and I shall have the betrothal very soon.”

With a low cry the girl crouched upon the floor, clasping his knees.

“Oh, no, Father, no,” she pleaded. “You are not so angry with me as that. Don’t send me away! Don’t send me away!”

He took her hands gently and lifted her—put his arm about her pitifully trembling shoulders.

“What a strange child. What a strange, foolish child. All maidens look forward to marriage. It is their right.”

“But not I, Father, not I!”

“You must do so. Of course it will be strange at first. Brides are often timid, but you are not lacking in courage. Theria, your constant dwelling upon thoughts which are for men makes you cold toward what is your business in life—which is marriage and childbearing. You are mature in things not for you and in all the rest an undeveloped child.”

This brutal statement was a nearer reading of Theria’s character than Nikander himself guessed. An unevenness of development was hers—a kind of mental hobbledehoy which is not infrequent in high-bred youngsters. Nay, more than this: An actual shrinking purity was the concomitant of her poetic gift. Other girls of Delphi discussed the facts of marriage with primitive frankness and looked forward to marriage as the one event to break monotony. Theria never spoke of it, and thought of it almost with horror—the strange house, the strange man, the mysteries from which she hid her eyes.

Shall we add to this the terrific pride of youth—that she held it a certainty that no family equalled the Nikanders? To mate even with another Delphian was a downward step. This pride was in her stubborn answer.

“Father, I cannot—I cannot.”

“Nonsense,” smiled Nikander, “of course you will. He is a good man—Timon’s son.”

“Have I seen him?”

“Daughter! Of course you have not.”

She wrung her hands in sudden wildness.

“I won’t marry,” she cried. “I won’t go away from the house I love to one I have never known. I won’t belong to Theras whom I have never seen. I will only belong to you, you, you!”

“Theria, my dear child,” began Nikander.

But she was quite beside herself. She stamped the floor with her foot.

“I won’t marry Theras! I won’t! I won’t!” she raged.

At the end of the interview Nikander brought out a small whip which was used for child slaves. With this he whipped his daughter. Greek fathers had this right even with grown sons, but Nikander had never used it.

At last, when she stood tall and tearless and he stood trembling in spite of effort to keep steady, he said:

“Daughter, this is not for your present act alone. It is for your year-long disobedience. I believe now that you will obey.”

She stood like a straight reed, so still, so horror struck. And in that stillness her father left her.

An hour later Theria was roused from her apathy by the sound of beautiful music.

It was in the street, and she curiously stole forward to her father’s room to look out of the little window there. She was in time to see Dryas borne along the way on the shoulders of his friends.

The full moon of the festival made the street as bright as day and the torches of the procession twinkled like jewels in the white light. Pindar walked in the procession chanting a strophe in Dryas’s honour. A chorus of youths followed singing the antistrophe, and behind these a boy played the cymbals upon which the glitter of sound met the lovely glitter of the moonlight.

Leaning out of the window, Theria suddenly exulted. “It is my song Pindar is praising. All those words are for me and it is Pindar, Pindar!”

In a burst of joyous music they passed within the house door below her, and Theria heard the pleasant confusion as they took their seats at the board and the scurry of the slaves beginning to serve them.

Then after a time came a faint tuning of a lyre, a pause, and Dryas started once more to sing his song—her song. He faltered. Oh, would her rumpus of the afternoon make him fail? She was in a panic—family pride, family affection were strong in the Nikander household—but after a little flickering Dryas’s flame burned bright. He even imitated his sister’s dramatic singing of the afternoon.

Theria could not hear Pindar’s exclamation of wonder that the lad should sing the song this evening with an entirely new meaning. She heard only the hand clappings, the mingled voices, the chitter of the silver cups—cups treasured many a year by successive Nikander housewives. A wave of loneliness swept over her—a Wave of fear, remembering her father’s purpose. And shrinking back from the window she made her way through the darkness to her room and bed.

BOOK II A CHILDHOOD IN DELPHI

CHAPTER III THERIA, SEVEN YEARS OLD

A little girl in an ancestral house—a slender, vivid, flashing little girl whom yet the rich traditions of her line filled to the brim with dreams—such had been Theria in her childhood.

The town in which she was born had not grown haphazard, had not been founded for trade nor for its nearness to some natural wealth.

Its central life was the god, the god of light and of enlightenment, of beauty and judicial fairness. Apollo was its source of happiness and its livelihood as well. He moulded the daily life. The focus of all Delphi was the shrine where, from a windy cleft beneath the temple, Apollo spoke, answering the wistful questions of men.

And of such an idealizing force it is true, that while it affects the community as a whole, it gives to certain individuals a heaped-up gift. Such a gift was upon this child, peculiar to her in Nikander’s house. Delphi had imprinted that expression on her baby face, that unmistakable look of spiritual life which had been the life of her fathers for at least four hundred years. So many traditions, so many prides, upliftings, adventures, poetries, and faiths, entering into the heart of a little girl. Nikander’s sons were just hearty, playful Greek boys. Theria was a Delphian.

One spring morning, when all Delphi was joyous with an awakening sky and earth, it happened that Theria was seven years old. She came tripping down the stairway of the inner court, fresh-washed from the hands of her nurse, fresh-dressed in a single garment which did not reach her knees.

“Now be good,” the old nurse had admonished her as she gave the last touch to her dark curls. “Your twin brother is playin’ that sweet down in the aula. Don’t ye go now and stir him up with your mischievous ways.”

And here in the court sure enough Dryas was playing “that sweet.” He had made a circle of pebbles and stones and was marching around and around it chanting some childish, made-up thing—perfectly absorbed, unseeing. Sunbeams slanted across the court leaving him in a sort of magic, refracted light; small rain-pools here and there among the worn pavement-flags gave back the blue, or wrinkled suddenly from the unseen breeze. In the corner the old, old tiny altar, upon which many generations of Nikanders had sacrificed, breathed yet the smoke of the morning rite. The place smelt sweet of wood-smoke. Now Theria was aware of a shadow moving across the court and looking up saw an eagle swoop down the sunlit air.

In after years Theria—a woman and far away—was to recall this scene cut clear and deep by the love she bore her home, but now she tripped recklessly down the unbalustered stair and scattered Dryas’s circle of stones with her foot.

“Let’s play,” she announced.

“Am playin’—threshin’-floor,” responded Dryas, breathless from circling.

“You don’t play threshing-floor now. That’s past.”

The Threshing-Floor was an ancient circular platform in the Precinct of Apollo. Every four years a sacred drama of the Python-snake was performed upon it and this year little Dryas had seen it.

“I’ll tell you,” said the disturbing Theria, “you fetch more stones. We’ll make the village and the road that goes by to the Oracle.”

The Oracle was the treasury of beauty and wonder of all Hellas, but to Delphic children it was just a dear bright place within high walls and the scene of their holidays.

Dryas did not answer, but he stopped his play and trotted off toward the outer room, which led to the front door, for the pebbles.

Theria waited impatiently while he brought in skirtful after skirtful of stones. Then she began to make her village, a stone for each well-known house, a line of little stones to show the road which passed their own door and ran windingly along the mountain slope. Theria set her miniature precinct in the sunny part of the court. To her the sunlight always and inevitably rested on that temple place where fane after fane and shrine after shrine mounted the hillside up to the matchless Apollo temple itself, set like a jewel of red and peacock-blue and gold against the shining cliffs.

“The Sacred Way,” murmured Dryas happily as he made the path between the temples. “Here it turns—an’ oh, here’s a sparkly stone for the ’Thenian Treasury.”

“The Knidian Treasury,” corrected Theria. “It’s the Knidian Treasury at the turn.”

“No—’Thenian!”

“No, don’t you remember the pretty marble ladies who hold up the porch?”

Still Dryas maintained his Athenian Treasury.

“Shu! You’ve never been there,” he said, “an’ I’ve been there lots o’ times.”

“I go every day,” announced the little girl.

At this evident whopper Dryas’s rosy mouth fell open in dismay.

“Never have you been there. You are only a girl.”

“I go there every day,” repeated Theria.

Quarrel was imminent; was averted only by Dryas scrambling to his feet to seek old Medon as judge.

“Never mind Medon, I’ll show you how I go,” and, taking her twin brother’s hand with an air of great bestowing, Theria led him up stairs and forward to her father’s bedchamber, to its one window. Out of this she leaned so far that only her chubby legs remained within. Sure enough, so leaning she could see beyond the shoulder of a cliff a spur of farther hill, and there in a bath of light the golden tip-edge of a little temple and on a higher level a single pillar bearing a sphynx of lofty wings.

“I see it every day,” she announced again.

“Only a little piece,” said Dryas contemptuously.

“When I see that I see all,” repeated the child enthusiast. “Medon has told me all.”

Dryas opened his lips to answer but thought better of it. Theria was a most determined little person when once she had made up her mind.

They went back to the aula. Here ruin met them. Baltè, the old nurse, was sweeping up their shrine of Apollo in great indignation.

“Whatever made ye litter up the aula like this?” She complained. “Rubble and rubbish when the rain washed all so clean last night. Never ye mind. I’ll be rid o’ one of ye after to-day.”

Dryas did not notice this speech but Theria looked up in alarm.

“Which one?” she asked.

“Never ye mind. There; I should not ’a’ spoken.”

“Why shouldn’t you spoken?”

Such caution was unusual in Baltè. The threat sounded real. Theria caught Baltè’s skirt.

“Is something goin’ to happen?”

“There, don’t you worry, darlin’. It won’t be you,” said the old nurse as she hurried away.

Dryas had rescued enough stones to recommence his threshing-floor. To tell truth, he had preferred this all along.

Theria sat beside him watching his play. The “something” was not going to happen to herself. Then surely it would happen to Dryas. Her heart began to yearn over her brother with that frightened tenderness which children know. She leaned over and kissed him. Dryas wiped off the kiss in frank disgust.

“Don’t,” he said.

She remembered the eagle. There was no bird so sure of omen as an eagle.

“Dryas,” she said softly, “I’ll tell you a story now.”

“No—please.”

Yet Theria lingered. Dreadful it was that she could do nothing for her brother when the eagle would so soon be carrying him away.

“I wish you would let me,” she said faintly. “I’ll give you all my honey cake at noon if you will.”

To such a bribe Dryas consented, squatting down in a chubby heap beside his pebbles.

“It’s about baby Hermes,” Theria began. “First, he was born, and when he was three hours old he got out of his cradle and walked straight up Parnassos Mountain—to the very top.”

“He couldn’t,” objected her auditor.

“But god-legs is strong.”

“Presè’s got a baby three months old and it can’t walk yet. Its worse’n a puppy.”

“Presè’s a slave. Slave legs is different.”

“But even a god, he couldn’t do it.”

And though Theria knew her story was correct, she did not press the point.

“And little Hermes found some cows,” she went on. “Oh, beautiful wild cows with sharpy-sharp horns. All the cows were white and were eating white flowers that grow in the meadows up against the sky.”

“Clouds?” suggested Dryas.

“Yes, clouds were their food,” went on Theria who knew the tale by rote. “For they were the herd of Apollo. And the little baby called the cows and they left their white flowers and came; for who can resist the call of a god? And Hermes, swift of foot——”

“Three-hours-old foot,” interposed Dryas.

“—leaped down the path, and all the cows they followed him. And when he came to the deep forest he sacrificed the cows to his father, Zeus, and the smoke went up through the trees to heaven and smelt very sweet. Then Hermes found a tortoise, and out of the tortoise and the cows’ pretty horns he made a lyre—oh, the first, first lyre that ever was made. And the baby Hermes began to play on the lyre—

—Oh, god-music, as pretty as Father plays or Pindar when he——”

“Here, here!” came an unexpected voice. “It’s very well to compare Pindar to Hermes but your father is another matter.”

The children scrambled to their feet with faces of delight. It was rare to see their father at this hour. And Father always brought gaiety.

CHAPTER IV ELEUTHERIA LOOKS OUT OF A WINDOW

Nikander was a tall slender man, a remarkable uniting of sensitiveness and force. Twelve generations of his forbears had been priests of Delphi, statesmen of wide outlook and ministers to the souls of men. Nikander was a resultant type.

He sat down on a stone bench lifting Dryas to his knee, but Theria crept into the hollow of his arm. Her fears took flight like scattered birds. No harm could come to Dryas now that her father was there.

“And what day, think you, is this?” he asked. Birthdays were not so important in those days and the children did not know.

“It is Dryas’s birthday,” he told them.

“Then my birthday, too,” exclaimed Theria, for though she was taller and seemed older than her brother, she was his twin.

“Yes, yours, too.” Quite unconscious of his act, Nikander bent and kissed the little girl. So bending, his face was the mature model for her own.

“And because it is the seventh birthday it is to be the first day of school. Medon will take you, Dryas. He will be pedagogue. And here is your little lyre. Father bought it to-day of the old lyre maker. See what a pretty picture is here beneath the strings. And for you, my daughter, what you have wanted so long.”

He drew from behind the bench the ropes and seat of a swing. “But I wanted a lyre, too,” said Theria with wide, blank eyes.

“A lyre for a little girl! Oh, no, kitten. Besides, did you not ask for a swing?”

“But, oh, Father, it is the lyre I want.”

“Theria must not be envious,” said her father seriously. “That would be a new fault in my little girl.”

But her wide, astonished eyes disturbed him and again he kissed the child before he hurried out.

Dryas with little cluckings of delight plucked at his toy, but Theria stood very still. Since she was to have no lyre, was it also true that she was not to go to school?

She seemed in the presence of a calamity which had been approaching since all the days she had been alive, and now was come. With the vagueness of her seven years, yet very deeply, she knew that not going to school meant the parting of the ways between her and Dryas, the closing away from her of precious things. Yet, strangely enough, in her surface, childish self, she did not believe it at all.

Father had not said she could not go. Besides, she had always got what she wanted if she persisted. She knew from her big brother Lycophron what the school was like—a room or portico up near the Precinct, the master teaching Homer all the day long—wonderful stories which one could not forget, boys playing their lyres merrily then hanging them upon the wall to go out and leap and race in contest in the sunshine. Lycophron had gone to school since the beginning of the world.

Theria did not associate Baltè’s warning with this matter at all.

“I go to school to-day,” she began to say softly to herself. “Then I must hurry.”

With a certain anxiety she crossed the court to Lycophron’s room. Yes, there on the chest were his extra stylus and tablets and hanging on the wall a small lyre which in a temper he had broken.

Theria climbed the chest and got it.

And in possession of these things confidence came to her. She was perfectly sure now that she should go to school. She began to hum briskly to herself. She went back into the court to be near Dryas lest when Medon come he forget her.

Dryas was prancing about, hugging his lyre. He was not slow to taunt her.

“Ai: I’m going to school. You can’t go; you can’t go!”

“I can. Father said I could. I heard him.”

“When did he say it?”

“I don’t know when, but I heard him! ‘Daughter, you are going to school; you are seven years old! Everybody goes to school then.’”

“He didn’t give you the lyre. He gave it to me,” gloried Dryas.

“I’ve a lyre, too, foolish one.” She held it out.

“Ai, what a broken thing, and it’s Lycophron’s. It’s none of yours.”

“If I had a lyre I’d play it, not hug it,” retorted Theria.

Here Medon came into the aula with sandals on. To Theria it was a thunder-clap. She watched him steadily as he crossed to them, then with loving gesture slipped her hand into his.

“But,” said the slave, “my darling is not going to-day. It’s Dryas who must go. Poor Dryas!”

“Oh, no: you didn’t understand,” she reasoned with him. “Father wants me to go.” She pushed back her curls with a nervous little gesture and looked brightly up at him.

Medon dreaded a battle with Theria. The child had a storm-like temper. To be sure it broke seldom, but it was always on some bright day like this and nearly always had to do with going out of the house—a privilege rare for little girls. Most girls did not expect to go out. Theria always expected it, like a boy, and fought for it like a boy, too. Something told him she was going to fight now. He must do his best.

“Medon will buy you a hoop in the market—a hoop, mind you, with bells—if you will be good.”

“I don’t want that.” How tight she held his hand and how black were the childish eyes gazing up at him. “I’ll tell you, Medon, you can give the hoop to Dryas. School will be hard for Dryas. It’s going to be so easy for me.”

“But, my dear little mistress, you cannot go. There are no girls at the school.”

Medon felt the hand tighten sharply in his. The child was looking off at a distance. Then with complete change she slipped her hand out of his.

“Yes, you and Dryas go,” she said.

She ran quickly up the stair to the women’s apartments—no doubt to cry alone, and Medon, seizing his opportunity, fairly fled with his charge from the house.

Medon carried the little boy’s lyre and very peacefully they walked along the road toward the Precinct. They had gone some distance when Medon heard running steps behind him, and, turning, saw to his amazement Theria as if on wings, her black hair streaming behind, her chubby arms clasping a lyre.

“I’m going!” she cried. “I will; I will!”

And then it was that Medon had to carry back along the road a strange wild creature that fought and kicked and bit and clutched at his hair.

The neighbours hearing the cries ran out of their houses and shook their heads at Nikander’s terrible child. Poor Medon was like to drop into the earth for shame. Yet amid all the tumult he kept thinking of a mountain stream which had been dammed back but which one day broke through and rushed away—a mighty flood.

Nikander’s alarmed family—wife, slaves, and all—met them at the door.

“Now for what do the gods punish me?” cried poor Melantho, “that I should have such a child! Look at her eyes. She is beside herself. Baltè, hold her!”

But as Medon set down the little raging tumult old Baltè let her escape. Up the stairs she flew, her voice like a clarion.

“Leave her be, dear mistress,” pleaded wise old Baltè. “Remember, she is a twin child and it does grieve her sore to be separate from her twin.”

In the farthest room of the house Theria found refuge and slammed the door. Here she threw herself face downward and beat the floor with her fists; yes, and kicked, too, as her childish grief surged to and fro within her. Her strength spent itself at last and she fell to sobbing, suffering now as she had not done amid the curious enjoyment of loud woe.

Her thoughts now were not of the school nor of Dryas, but of her father, the strange horror that her father should have done this and not seem to care. Always before this had he mended hurts, not made them. Facing this mystery her dearest faith tottered. Yet after a while even this dread grew faint. Thoughts faded into fancies. Then she fell asleep.

She must have slept a long while for she awoke strangely quiet. Her refuge place was a storeroom. Chests stood about full of things used only at festivals. There were also great earthen jars of grain and wine.

The room was stone floored, stone walled, but its far end was hewn into the native rock. Nikander’s house, standing on a side hill, was two storied in front but here at the back melted to the roof in the hillside. This room had a little low window—the only other window in the house besides that in Nikander’s room.

To this window the little girl crept, and leaned her two elbows on the ledge, her chin in her hands. The window showed her only the side lane which led up between the houses to lose itself in the hill above. This lane was wider than most of the lanes in Delphi, for it had been chosen by one of the mountain streams for a bed, and now in the springtime the foaming waters dashed downward between the house walls beside the footpath.

There was no sound in the lane save the happy speaking of the waters. An amber light lay over all as if the sun were setting, and in this rich light everything stood distinct: ferns, rocks, and the tiny flowers on the mossy roof of Cousin Phaino’s house across the lane. Every little wave as it lifted in the stream turned golden and as it dived under again seemed to peep at Theria and laugh. Presently a child came down from the upper hills into the lane. What could so small a child have been doing up there alone in that wilderness of crags? But what a lovely child he was, what brave, erect little shoulders and rounded legs and what a mischievous, dream-haunted face! How fearlessly he leaped along! He was only a baby. Oh, why should he not leap? Wings were on his heels and two golden wings in his cap—Hermes, and no other!

To Theria it was not strange that Hermes should thus stroll down Nikander’s lane. Not strange, but it made her very glad. Now the dear Hermes child paused by the stream, laid his tortoise lyre to his arm, and began to play. Theria had never heard such music. It was clear like the amber light and filled her with a joy that was to glisten softly down all her years. Yet it was very faint, that music. She had to strain her ears to hear.

Presently under its rhythm the stream grew more turbulent. The waves dashed higher and turned to foaming white. And suddenly from each white wave where it tossed in swift succession there swam out into the air nymphs white as the foam, slender as flowers, immortally fair.

Theria knew it was right for them to come. Nymphs were always the nursemaids of infant gods. Little Hermes must not wander alone, god though he be. How delicately they kissed him, bending over him, then rising, circling up and away as if carried by the breeze. Hermes was safe now no matter how rough the way.

Suddenly a step sounded in the lane, “clump clump,” coming nearer.

The nymphs and Hermes stopped still, listing as hares do in the path. Then instantly, thus poised, they vanished.

“Lentils—good lentils, who’ll buy?” came the call of old Labba, the market woman, so tired with her day’s work, tramping home to her poor scraggy farm in the hills.

Theria watched her. Poor Labba! She could not see the gods. Labba climbed the hill and was lost to view. Theria looked again.

Yes—at once, as though bursting out of invisible pods, they came again, and with them the music so elfin clear. The nymphs formed a circle and danced, with feet which did not touch the rocks, around their baby god. Sometimes they circled above the stream, sometimes swept near under Theria’s very window. So they danced and danced.

Baltè, searching anxiously through the house for her nurseling, found her at length in the far shadowy room. She was sitting by the window, her head resting on the window ledge over which was strewn loose her night-dark hair.

She was sound asleep.

“An’ I only wish,” said Baltè afterward to Medon, “you could ’a’ seen the smile on her face. You wouldn’t ’a’ thought this very mornin’ she was like a whole crew o’ mænads!”

CHAPTER V THE TRADITIONS OF THE HOUSE

So Theria’s world was bounded by the house. Fortunate was it then that the house was rich in memories. Rich otherwise it was not. No earnest Greek beautified his own house when he could beautify instead the house and temple of his deathless gods. So the walls of Nikander’s house were of plain stucco, its floors, worn flags.

To be sure the furniture, handed down from olden days, was beautiful. The bedsteads were chastely carved, their coverings were of home-made purple, and Melantho’s chair in which she sat to spin was of exquisite shape and balance. The tables in the men’s aula, where Nikander feasted his guests, were of teak-wood brought from afar by some travelled merchant to the Pythian feast. The vases in every room and put to all possible uses were of a grace and workmanship which only the Greeks knew. They were of the ordinary make, which everyone afforded, from the Delphi pottery below the hill. Upon them were painted pictures of the heroes and the gods—Theria’s charming picture books which sometimes told whole stories.

The plain old house had been built upon, lived in, and loved by a dozen generations of Nikanders. It had absorbed within itself the beauty of their daily life and seemed to give it forth again—a sort of fragrance to be sensed the moment you crossed the threshold. The Nikanders were one of those quiet families of exceeding excellence and highmindedness which always exist in great numbers in the background of an age of genius.

Time had harmonized the house. The lines of wall and ceiling were no longer plumb and level. The grey stucco had been stained lavender, yellow, faint rose by lichen growths. No threshold in the house but was worn deep by the tread of feet now passed beyond. In front of the little altar to Hestia the stone floor was hollowed like a bowl, where father and son, father and son had stood to offer reverent sacrifice to the goddess of the hearth.

Into this atmosphere Theria had been born and in it her spirit grew, keeping itself alive within the straitened, prescribed round.

But through the house were also wafted deep draughts of life from the Oracle—that mysterious shrine which seems to us like some myth, but which to the Greek was business-real.

The manner of divination at Delphi was peculiar in that it gave the priests an opportunity to mould the divine answer without at the same time losing faith in its divineness. The Priestess or Pythoness was a simple girl comprehending nothing of the knowledge which she must impart. In preparation for the day of oracle she was subjected to three days of rite. She fasted, drank of the sacred spring, walked through laurel smoke; and with her perfect faith in these rites, she must often have been in the ecstatic state before mounting the tripod.

Then in the shadowy adytum beneath the temple she was placed upon the golden tripod, the “High Perilous Seat” as it was called. The cold wind blew out of the cleft below her and in ecstasy she spoke words she knew not. It is undoubted that in her state of suspended consciousness she often reflected as in a mirror the knowledge and judgments of the priests. Her marvellous answers often filled priests and questioners alike with awe. The priests afterward were allowed to recast the answers into verse and to remould them. But in spite of the liberty which they occasionally felt obliged to use in the recasting the priests sincerely believed that the responses were genuinely from the god.

It was this mingling of faith and liberty which gave Delphi her power, a power which was for the most part grandly used. At the dawn of Hellas, from this eerie mountain glen the authority began to be exercised. It continued down through all the glory of Hellas and for centuries after her decline. Strong and real indeed must have been the religious impetus which could outlast the race.

This was the Oracle which Theria’s kin had served with singleness of heart. Her father, Nikander, served it now. Priest, yes, but priest in the joyous, free fashion of the Greek. In performance of his priestly duties to the Oracle Nikander had travelled far, studying the coasts of the Ægean, Mediterranean, and Euxine seas, wherever lay the colonies of Delphi’s founding. He had mingled with the barbarians or un-hellenic peoples and had even learned some of their languages—a sort of knowledge unknown in Greece. In Thrace he had sojourned with the rude tent dwellers, in Egypt he had visited the stately temples of Isis and Osiris and had seen the great Sphynx which so grimly faced the desert. In Persia he had visited the court of Xerxes and despised its luxury. He had returned to Delphi broadened and sweetened by his experiences.

Among the narrow one-city men of Greece the Delphian was not provincial.

Nikander was a member of that Council, presided over by Delphi, called “Amphyction,” which for hundreds of years had upheld the only international law that Hellas recognized. The Amphyctiony earnestly tried to keep peace between the passionate cities which were its members. Nikander personally had great influence in this Council and used that influence for the constant uplifting of the policy of the Oracle.

Nikander brought with him into his home the very breath of the Oracle. He spent little time at home, but when he did come his children ran to him, for no one could tell such wonder stories as Nikander—stories of shipwreck on savage coasts, of mountains that flamed and smoked, of the great statue Memnon which stood in Egypt and sang when the sun rose. But for the most part Nikander’s tales were tales of Delphi. Delphi was so rich in tradition that Nikander needed never to go far afield for his stories.

It was from her father that Theria heard of the beautiful coming of her own ancestors to Delphi, men brought by Apollo himself to be his worshippers.

“They were in a ship on a trading voyage,” Nikander would relate, “those ancestors of ours, bold young men, unafraid of the sea, for they were Cretan islanders. When suddenly there leaped out of the waves a Dolphin, golden and bright, and lay on their deck. At once the wind changed, speeding them toward the west. They tried to shift their sails but not one whit could they shift their course. The men were sore afraid for they knew they were in the hands of a god.”

“The Dolphin god,” Theria would murmur with Wide eyes.

“Yes, the Delphian,” her father made the age-old pun. “And they saw the immortal creature shimmer with rainbow colours never ceasing. So the strong wind blew them against their will first westward then northward into our own lovely gulf and to our port of Krissa. Here the ship stopped, held by immortal hands.

“Then at once the Dolphin disappeared and in his stead stood a young man strong and beautiful with golden locks out-sprayed upon the winds and eyes whose light was as the dawn of day.”

Theria would clap her hands softly, saying, “And he leaped upon the shore, our dear Apollo, and beckoned the men with his hand.” She knew the tale by heart.

Nikander would continue, smiling:

“And Apollo, lightly stepping, playing upon his heavenly lyre, led the Cretans hither, right by the place where our house now stands and up to the ‘place of golden tripods’ yonder.

“‘This is to be yours,’ he told the Cretans. ‘Here shall ye serve my oracle.’

“Then the Cretans looked about them. They saw the sterile cliffs and rocky hillsides on which nothing would grow. And they asked in apprehension:

“‘How can we live in this place, O Lord Apollo? Here will no grain grow, no cattle find fodder. Here we cannot fish.’”

The children laughed at this.

“Fish! O foolish, foolish Cretans!”

“Yes, foolish Cretans. So Apollo called them. ‘Do ye so love to delve in the earth, and sweat? Do ye so love to be buffeted by salt water and bitter winds? A secret I will tell you! Sit ye here, attend my worship, and all the nations of the earth shall bring you gifts. My altars shall smoke with the fat of lambs, my temples glow with golden things. But your duty shall be to guard my temple and to receive kindly in my name the tribes of men who gather here.

“‘But if any of you ill-treat the stranger, if ye do violence or speak harsh words, then shall others be your masters and make you slaves for ever.’”

“But we will never be slaves?” Theria would inquire anxiously. “We will never do those wicked deeds and be slaved?”

“No, never.” Nikander would kiss the child who cuddled so close in his arms and then with yet more fondness kiss his son Dryas.

Such was the ennobling tradition which the little girl Theria treasured in her heart. But she knew, too, that the Delphi god had not always been master of his shrine. Story upon story, faith upon faith went back into the misty past where the chaste belief in Apollo was underlaid with grotesque stories of Gaia—Mother Earth—and dragons.

It was from her nurse Baltè that she heard these older tales though they were sternly and fearfully believed by all Delphians.

Baltè one afternoon found the little girl sitting by Nikander’s front window gazing outward in silence. It was a place of wide prospect. The house was one of the few which stood above the main road, and so steep was the incline that the roofs across the way seemed but little higher than the road itself. Theria could look over them and over other roofs in sharp downward succession into the violet depth of Pleistos gorge and then up to the fir-clad mountain beyond.

A storm of clear-edged cloud was sweeping along that slope with flashes and mutterings. She watched wistfully its swiftness and its strength.

Baltè came from behind and kissed her.

“Now an’ why aren’t ye down in the aula playin’ with Clitè an’ Nerea? It’s always I find ye by yourself at the window. It isn’t right for little girls to be seen from the street.”

But Theria was full of questions. “Baltè, what does the glen find when it goes down into the shadows? It always seems to stoop down and down.”

“The river, do ye mean, darlin’?”

“But I can’t see the river, I’ve tried so many days.”

“No, the glen is too deep to see the Pleistos.”

“Baltè, did you ever go across the river to the other mountain—far, far over where Father Zeus has driven his clouds?”

“No, child, not I. What ever would I be doin’ there?”

“I’d like to go,” said the child.

“Don’t ye never! Do ye see that little rift-like all black on the mountainside among the firs?”

“Yes, Baltè.”

“Well, down in that rift is the cave o’ Lamia—a woman the upper part of her, but all the rest a snake. In the olden time she did come hitherward and ravaged the country.”

“What’s ravid?”

“Oh, knockin’ down the houses and eatin’ the folk. So at last to quiet her they did take a boy—oh, a nice likely young boy of the village—and leave him for her in that cave.”

“What for?”

“To eat! Every day a boy!”

By this time Theria’s eyes were wide, and she reached furtively and caught Baltè’s skirt.

“But then there came the hero Eurymalos an’ he walked right into the cave, he did. An’ he caught Lamia and pulled her out, and cast her down the cliff. Then she fell down, down, a-bumpin’ and bangin’ her head all the way—right into the river Pleistos.”

“Paian be praised!” breathed the little girl.

“Yes, but them kind don’t stay killed,” said Baltè uncomfortingly. “Look at the other one, the Python now. Apollo killed her long since. But every fourth year the Sacred Boy has to go up there in the Precinct an’ kill her again.”

“But, Baltè, that’s only a play to make a holy memory to the god.” Theria felt sure of this, for not long ago her cousin had been the Sacred Boy in the play and she had heard Mother say that if Dryas continued to do so well in school, and if he grew graceful and fair, he, too, might some day be the “Boy of The Strepterion Drama.” She somehow felt sure that Dryas could not kill a real Python.

But Baltè shook her head.

“Don’t tell me!” she said stoutly. “Ye haven’t seen her. I have. I’ve seen the switch o’ the Python’s tail, an’ heard her teeth grind, the while she dies. An’ when she is dead, don’t they perform all the purifications just as when old mistress died in the house? She’s real, I tell ye!”

Theria was more than half convinced.

Yet even the Python and the boy-eating Lamia did not so strike terror to the childish Theria as did the strange rites which through winter months occupied the Delphians. These were no tales of the past but rites of Dionysos which Theria herself could see.

In the winter came Dionysos, a powerful god, to take possession of the Precinct while Apollo should be away in the north. Then Theban women—a large company—arrived in Delphi to greet him. Theria saw them pass and knew that a like company from Athens was arriving at the other end of the village.

A society of Delphian ladies never else seen publicly came crowding out of their houses into the highway. From her favoured window Theria saw these also, her own kinswomen whom she knew well, no longer sedate and kind and neat, but with hair disordered, clad in strange spotted fawn skins over their chitons. They came leaping, shouting, whirling around in a sort of frenzy as though unable to wait for the rites which they were about to perform. They were no longer themselves, they were possessed by the strange god Dionysos. They were no longer called women, but Bacchantes. They were being swept along by a terrible joy from which the child shrank in shame though she could not understand.

On one such evening Theria watched them, saw the chill, dusky street aflare with their torches, saw how the eyes of the Bacchantes caught the light, staring like the eyes of panthers. Then in a frenzied, noisy rout they rushed away.

Theria sat by her window quivering while the cold yellow light died out on glen and mountain. Then quickly she left the window and stole down to the aula where she sat close to the Hestia fire. One of those first evenings of frost it was when instinctively men draw near to their hearth and wish to have about them the home faces and the comfortable voices of home. Yet the little girl knew that her Aunt Eunomia, her pretty cousin Clodora, and the rest, were speeding half-naked up Parnassos, there in the bitter uplands and the wild to rage madly to and fro at the will of the god.

Lycophron burst into the room, rosy with the cold, rude as fourteen years could make him.

“Did you see the women?” he shouted. “By the gods, I could hardly get home for them. Free at last—that’s what they are, havin’ the time of their lives. Dionysos is only an excuse. Hey, Theria, you are always wanting to get out. Why don’t you join?”

Lycophron did not see his father who had just come down the stair.

“Lycophron,” said the father sternly, “how do you dare such insolence? Let me never hear such from you again.”

And Lycophron disappeared more suddenly than he had come.

Nikander drew near the fire, absently warming his hands. Even at this early time he was disturbed over his eldest son.

“Are they gone?” queried the little girl.

“The Bacchantes? Yes, my child. As I came up the street I saw far up on the mountain their Bacchic fires gleaming through the dusk. It is cold for the night of Bromios.”

Theria knew of what he was thinking—a little great-great-aunt of hers who had died on a night like this, in the cold of the Parnassian rocks. A tiny room next to Theria’s own had belonged to her and she was said to visit it on Bromios night, a white, chattering figure trying in vain to warm herself amid the purple covering of the couch.

Theria stole to her father’s side, slipped her hand In his, and drew him down to whisper:

“Father, must I be a Bacchante some day?”

“God forbid,” spoke Nikander, then added piously, “unless the god demand you, Theria.”

“But he will not demand me. Oh, Father, he will not?”

Again she was in the hollow of his arm and again felt safe even from the god Dionysos himself.

“No, my daughter,” he said, looking into the sane little face. “I do not believe he will.”

CHAPTER VI THE GUESTS

So throughout the winter months Dionysos, that god who came from far Asia into Greece, held sway in Delphi. Apollo was gone on his distant mysterious journey to the land of the Hyperboreans, those happy, luxurious folk who live on the farther side of the north wind. Theria felt keenly this absence of her god: more keenly perhaps than she would have felt the absence of any person in the household.

For with Apollo’s going the Oracle was silenced. No pilgrims came to consult it. The pure, ordered songs of Apollo, the throbbing lyre, the announcing trumpets were stilled. Instead sounded the nervous wailing of Dionysos pipes. On quiet evenings Theria could hear them, and Baltè told her of the furious satyr dances in the Precinct. And now the absence of Apollo brought the rains and the cold. Yes, in the winter Theria missed her god.

When, therefore, in the spring Apollo returned, the whole heart of the little girl went forth to him in love. Theria knew well how her god must look. Every vase and kylix in the house bore pictures of Apollo. And long ago her child mind had selected, from among the beautiful youths she had seen come by on pilgrimage, one who seemed to her like the god himself. Always at the word “Apollo” Theria saw again that fresh-hearted happy boy moving, flushed and expectant, toward the Precinct, and on his face that same look of dear surprise, youth’s first response to life.

Apollo always arrived at Delphi on his birthday the seventh of Busious. Then the whole Precinct and the town awoke to greet him with song and festival. In Nikander’s house slaves ran to and fro on busy errands; for of a surety guests would be coming from the ends of the earth. The purples and the woven curtains came forth from Theria’s familiar storeroom, and all the house glowed with the patterns and pictures of tapestries. What joy to the little girl that busyness and commotion.

Past the house on the highroad now came throngs of pilgrims, more of them every day. At these times no forbiddings or punishments could keep Theria away from the window.

Here came men from Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and the islands of the sea. Rich men on horseback with trains of slaves, poor men whose anxious faces showed plain their question to the god. “Even the wolves bring gifts to Delphi,” was the saying; and some of these with their heavy mountain faces and clothes of skin seemed wild and wolf-like to the little girl. Now would pass a delegation from some distant Delphian colony bearing the tithe gift to the mother fane; for Apollo was founder of cities. It was he who had first led the colonists to their distant lands over the misty deep. Sculptors came accompanying their statues; poets brought their songs. Now would pass an Ionian gentleman in long purple cloak, laughing, gesturing; now a quiet young philosopher whose large-eyed vivid face showed his spirit-quest. Philosophers were well known in Delphi and more welcome than kings.

How eagerly the visitors talked as they came along. They had arrived after long journeying to within sight of their goal. The broad Doric speech, the melodious Attic, the barbarous dialects mixed with the speech of Scyths, Sikels, and Gauls, all these she heard.

Among these passers-by were sure to be some who would stop and enter Nikander’s door—guests of the priestly house. Often these were men of high renown, but quite as often they would be poor, in threadbare garments, who had came to the Oracle in bitter need. To these Nikander’s ministry was almost un-Greek in its overflowing sympathy. An inherited skill of kindness was his and his poet quality of insight was of no peculiar race or date. Many a troubled wight came forth from Nikander’s presence, serene to face the god.

In the centre of Nikander’s as in every Greek house there was a fast-closed door. Behind this door lived the women. They might, when only the family was in the house, come through this door, but they had no business or occupation on its outer side. At the appearance of a guest the women must quickly disappear.

This door was at once Theria’s greatest grief and greatest delight. Grief that it must constrain her at all. Delight in that she could steal through it and catch glimpses of her father’s guests. Often though she was punished for this Theria always did it. Who would not take punishment for a glimpse of Æschylus, Kimon, Parmenides, or Pindar!

“Back to your room—quick, Daughter!” Nikander would command whenever he noticed her. But often Nikander would be absorbed in his guest, and the room would be confused with serving-slaves. Nikander would not even see Theria’s little figure crouched by a pillar.

Of all the guests the Theban poet Pindar was the one whom Theria loved best. Indeed all children loved Pindar. Not a child in Delphi but would lift up eager hands to that radiant smile as Pindar passed. There was in him an almost aggressive joy. The same vitality which makes a child leap and run and shout—all this was in his adult nature. It shone out of the clear deeps which were his eyes and trembled on his full Greek lips. He seemed always just to have taken a deep breath as if joying in the very air about him. His rather large mouth and his nose both were well-built for breathing. Splendour was his—splendour of imagination. His whole being exulted in response to spiritual beauty unseen by other men.

All Delphi adored him. They had a strangely spiritual custom concerning him. Wherever Pindar might be in bodily comings or goings, the keeper of the Apollo temple when closing the shining doors at sunset hour was wont to call aloud:

“Let Pindar, the poet, go in to the supper of the god!”

Theria was a very little girl when she first saw Pindar. She was awakened by a sweet commotion of music, and getting up from her bed she trotted down into the front aula. The fateful door had been left open and she stole through, a diminutive figure in her short chiton. She went direct to Pindar.

The poet laid his lyre upon the table and lifted the child to his knee.

“There, there; I awakened you, little one,” he said tenderly.

“No,” she answered, “the music called me.”

“Called you, did it? And so you had to come?”

She did not answer but gazed up at him unwinking, her tiny hands folding and unfolding in her utter joy at being so near to him. She was unaware of the others sitting at the feast.

“Where do you get it?” she asked.

“Get what? The lyre? Oh, of the lyre-maker in Athens.”

She shook her curls.

“No, the song. Does it come out of the air?”

“Perhaps so, little one. Apollo gives it, surely.”

“Oh, will he give one to me?” she asked, her hands clasping suddenly close to her breast. “If I make a prayer to him and a sacrifice—a big, big sacrifice like Father’s? A sheep, and burn it all up with leaping flame till it smells so good—so good?”

Her baby nose sniffed deliciously and all the men laughed.

“And where will you get your big sheep?” teased one.

“Nay, do not spoil her hope,” spoke Pindar quickly. He drew the lyre toward her and instantly her chubby hand reached out to touch the strings, sounding them lovingly, softly.

Pindar watched her, absorbed.

“The god will give you your song, darling. Apollo’s answer is already in your eyes and fingers.”

“Do you think so, Pindar?” asked Nikander, amused. “Yet even so the child must not stop our feast. Medon, will you carry her back to her nurse?”

Nikander expected that she would cry and struggle, but she leaned over and kissed the lyre, then went away with Medon, quite satisfied.

Ever from that time Theria awakened at the first sound of Pindar’s lyre. She would steal down as near as she dared. If the door were shut she would press her ear against it in her eagerness to hear. If it were open she would crouch in its shadow. The slaves passing to and fro with the feast never told. Theria was a favourite with them.

It was Pindar’s habit to bring his songs to Nikander when they were glowing new. Nikander, a poet who had never written himself forth, had the keenest sense of poetic values and Pindar was glad of his judgments. Sometimes an ode would be sung again and again before both pronounced it right. Then Pindar would go out into the Delphic starlight humming the altered, perfected refrain:

or

or he would address his own songs, calling them

These were the familiars of Theria’s childhood and entered into the fabric of her mind. Pindar, as he strode singing away, little recked of the girl-listener drinking at his fountain and transmuted in all her being by his supreme expression.

CHAPTER VII WHAT GIFTS THE GUESTS BROUGHT

It was through a guest that Theria first came to visualize those distant colonies of the west which gave so many gifts to Delphi and played so important a part in Delphi’s life.

He was a simple-seeming guest, this young man from far-away Elea in Italy. But child though Theria was, she could not but note his face. It shone with an almost startling quietness, a robust and heavenly calm. The soul of the man had been dipped deep and deep again in abstract thought. Earthly things were washed away. The “Parmenidean Countenance of Peace” was soon to be recognized throughout Hellas, for even the disciples of Parmenides acquired this same look.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, as though it were an ordinary happening. “We were nearly shipwrecked off Corcyra. Four days of storm. I thought my earthly term was come. But I knew that I would at once rise from the sea and begin my long progress toward the Eternal Source.”

“Would you have been glad,” asked the amazed Nikander, “to go on pilgrimage to Hades?”

“No—no,” laughed Parmenides. “Too much to do here. Elea needs me. The city is now in my hands to govern quite as I will. I govern by philosophy. And, Nikander, we are happy in Elea! We are a little city and on a far-away coast, yet even Athens has not our justice and calm. Constantly I keep before the minds of our citizens the importance of right, the unimportance of this world’s goods. They know they are in the hands of The One.”

“I could not worship The One,” said Nikander seriously. “Think what a lonely god—an Only One, sitting sole and wordless in Olympos with no other god to speak to, to deal with, or to love. Or even to quarrel with,” he added whimsically.

“But the gods themselves worship my god. They know the One who is above them and controls.”

“Moira?” asked Nikander in a low voice. “Inexorable Fate?”

“No, Nikander, not Fate, but Love—creating all things—healing all things. Love—the First—the Source.”

Parmenides’s eyes shone with eerie light. He was fairly launched now. He began to recite his philosophy. It was—as was all literary expression in those days—a poem. Nikander listened entranced, laying it away in his retentive Greek memory which would give him back whole cantos of it almost entire.

Theria, crouched in the door corner wrapped in a dark cloak, was content to listen to the rhythm. Of the poem she understood not a word. Then she grew weary of her stolen pleasure, but she dared not move from her hiding place.

Presently Baltè began to call her through the house.

“Little mistress, little mistress, your mother asks for you. Little mistress, she is ill and needs you.”

For, strange to say, in Melantho’s frequent headaches it was Theria’s little magnetic hands which helped most of all.

“Apollo has blessed the child with his healing touch,” old Baltè was wont to say.

But now Baltè called in vain, and at last, fearing that her charge might be in forbidden quarters, she left off her call.

But the interminable poem went on. It mingled at last in Theria’s ears into a soft humming. Torches were brought, and the evening meal. Priest and philosopher lingered in ardent converse—that friction of mind upon mind which the Greek men of that day so loved and which with its sparkle and contagion of wit made the Greek look with contempt upon the mere written page.

Nikander, strolling dreamily to bed at midnight, stumbled upon the heap wrapped in its dark cloak, and lifted his daughter in his arms.

“Strange,” he murmured, “this continual disobedience. What can draw her hither—I wonder?”

The childish face sleeping upon his arm reminded him of his mother—a resemblance he had not noted before, and very tenderly he carried her to her bed where Baltè was waiting.

It was from a guest also that Theria heard the first whisper of The War—that steadily approaching war which was yet so far off that only the wise felt its dread.

Theria was older at this time and understood more of what she heard.

Her father one day entered suddenly bringing with him a stranger whose personality started her interest. Unremitting energy! That was the keynote of the man. He talked continually. Theria heard him even before he entered—the clear voice of the orator. His strange Attic dialect, his swift words made him a little difficult for her to understand. Fair he was, tall, blue-eyed, strong, something un-Greek about him. Nikander did not even see Theria this time. He was too absorbed in Themistokles.

Their talk was first about the new play at Athens. Themistokles had just heard the first great drama. His heart was afire with the excitement of it.

“It is new, utterly new and powerful,” he exclaimed. “Prometheus, it is called. Our Æschylus has outdone himself. The very gods come down upon the stage. And actors! We have never had such actors, Nikander. But it is the greatness of the play which creates them—the greatness of the play!”

“The lines!” pleaded Nikander. “Tell me the lines.”

And with ready memory Themistokles began. He gestured swiftly with his hands. “Flashing hands,” Theria named them. He puzzled her. Surely he was not Athenian—not quite moderate and serene—and his cloak with its border of purple and gold was a little too conspicuous of beauty.

In the midst of a scene he broke off.

“But here we talk of the play,” he said. “When I want to talk of dear Athens. Nikander, the Athenians are blind, every one of them, blind!”

“Gracious,” laughed Nikander, “no one else thinks so.”

“They will not believe that the Persian will come again. ‘Oh,’ they boast, ‘We conquered them at Marathon, that deed is done.’ But the deed is not done. Nikander, you know the Persian will return. Ye of Delphi, are you so unaware?”

He seized Nikander’s hand and Nikander sobered instantly.

“Indeed we are not unaware,” he answered.

“Oh, Nikander, the trophies of Miltiades will not let me rest. Such trophies must be won again. May the gods let me win them!”

Nikander did not reply but Theria saw him search the man’s face, as if anxiously measuring him for some great need.

“Have you news, Themistokles—fresh news?”

“No, only straws, but plenty of them. I keep a clever slave down at the Piræus who has no other business than to listen to stories of the ship-merchants and traders. Sailors know the way of the winds—the winds of the future. They push in at every shore. The Great King they tell us is now warring against Egypt, but our turn is next. Oh, it is surely the next. Nikander, the armies which Darius brought against us seven years agone were but a handful to those which his son Xerxes will bring.”

“I believe that,” said Nikander. “Ay, and the Delphian Council believe it, too.”

“Good!” exclaimed the Athenian.

“It is not good. Do you know, Themistokles, what this belief breeds in the Council? Fear; only fear! ‘Hellas cannot withstand the Persian.’ That is what they are whispering here in Delphi. ‘Hellas is doomed.’”

Themistokles’s face took on a horror which startled the listening girl.

“Nikander,” he cried, “you will not allow Delphi to shirk. The Oracle must stand by Athens!”

“I will stand by Athens and by all Hellas,” said Nikander solemnly. “I believe Apollo will defend his own.”

Themistokles now began to talk of the silver mines of Laurium and how he had been trying to persuade the Athenians to forego their yearly gift of silver in order to build ships for fighting against the little island of Ægina.

“Will so many ships be needed?” queried Nikander with sharp insight.

Themistokles leaned toward him, laughing softly, triumphantly. “For the war with Ægina!” he said, low-toned. “Believe me, for that war the ships will not be used. But when the Persian comes, he will find certain ships in our harbour that will give him pause. Remember that, Nikander, so that you may give credit to Themistokles who saw before the event.”

All too soon Themistokles took his departure. Afterward Theria heard the slaves gossiping about the man. “He brought with him a purple tent,” they said, “and furniture and many slaves, even for his short visit.” Themistokles lived like a prince in Delphi.

CHAPTER VIII DRYAS TAKES A ROBBER

There was no use mincing matters; Lycophron, the eldest son of Nikander, was not satisfactory. Handsome in person, he had nevertheless always been slow to learn and swift in evil doing, the bane of his Delphic schoolmasters. At fourteen years his features had coarsened, his eyes grown less intelligent. Now at eighteen that phase was past and he was clever in a fashion which Nikander vainly tried to think creditable. Nikander wanted to keep close to his boy in study and sports. Lycophron was his first-born. Some day Lycophron would be priest in Nikander’s stead, would take his chair in the Amphictyonic Council. Yet try as he might, Nikander could never look forward to this succession without shame.

Lycophron now began to demand money for horses and a chariot for the Olympian games. Nikander could ill afford so expensive a winning. He had hoped that his eldest son would win the crown for leaping or running, some act which would be reflected back in manly beauty and strength. Yet Nikander managed to give Lycophron money for his horses. He loved his eldest with a sensitive, intimate love.

But now came Dryas. Dryas from the first week of school had shown himself a promising son of the ancient house, and Nikander’s joy in him was beautiful to see. Always when Dryas returned from school Nikander would contrive to be in the aula to greet him, to hear the latest Doric melody the boy had learned, to correct the faults, or recite with him the passage of Homer which had been the lesson of the day.

Sometimes Nikander would linger along the road, meet Dryas, and, dismissing the pedagogue, would himself conduct the boy home.

Dryas was not always strong. Nikander summoned for him the best physicians from Athens and on his ill days would sit beside him patiently trying to ease the child. At such times Theria helped, knowing by that curious instinct of hers what to do. And when the pain was eased, Dryas would draw her face down and kiss her. Nikander was almost jealous of the love that Dryas gave to his twin sister. As he grew taller, however, Dryas grew also well and strong.

One winter evening Dryas and his slave boy were returning from the gymnasium, old Medon his pedagogue being lame and at home. All afternoon Dryas had been exercising. Then in the gymnasium he had stood under the pouring fountain, a chilly bath, and the slave boy had rubbed him to a glow. He was full of life and of a sense of waxing strength. Dreams of Olympian contests were in his heart as they were in the heart of every boy of Greece.

“Come,” said he to the slave. “Let’s go out the eastern road. You have the bow. Maybe we’ll bring down a hare.”

“It will grow dark soon,” ventured the slave. “And your father will be coming to meet you.”

“It won’t be dark,” answered Dryas. “Come, I say.”

So together they walked eastward on the hill road. They passed the row of outer temples and the hillside tombs. Sure enough, against all hope, a hare leaped across the road. Dryas shot it, and the slave fetched and slung it over his shoulder. Then they started back to town.

Twilight had fallen when they repassed the graves. The boys shrank close to each other. Both slave and free were afraid of the spirits which hovered there.

As they came to the roadside temples they saw a man dart quickly around a corner.

“What was that?” asked Dryas sharply.

“I don’t know,” answered the slave. Dryas, with wide eyes of fear, backed behind a rock.

“If he’s stealing from the gods we ought to stop him,” spoke the slave. “See; we have our bow.”

At this word Dryas, ashamed of his fear, came out from hiding.

“Stay by me,” he pleaded, and the slave advanced first.

These small temples, being outside the Precinct wall, were poorly guarded. The boys crept nearer and rounded the corner just in time to see the man with some silver cups in his arms running down the hill.

The boys gave chase. The man circled around so as to come up the hill again. The upper heights were always a fastness for robbers. The boys still followed, and above the road overtook the man.

Dryas with a cry half like a sob leaped upon him while the slave at the same time tripped his heels. The fellow went down like a log, screaming in panic. The boys quickly possessed themselves of the cups. The slave with his own leather belt tied the man’s hands, and together the boys pulled the man down the road—he not resisting at all. They pushed him along toward town.

At the edge of the village Nikander met them. In all his life Nikander never forgot that shock—first the fear, then the joy—as he realized that Dryas, spite of bleeding face and dishevelled hair, was safe and that he had done a brave deed.

“Father, it is a robber,” Dryas was saying excitedly. “I caught him by the outer temples. See, he had the silver temple cups.”

“My son,” said Nikander. “My son!”

At sound of Nikander’s voice the man fell down again, howling like an animal in fear. And strangely, Dryas, too, broke into hysterical weeping.

“Don’t let them kill him, Father. Don’t let them kill the man!”

“But he has committed sacrilege.”

“Oh, no—no, if they kill him I’ll die, too. Oh, I’m afraid! Oh, he would haunt me.”

“Nonsense, Dryas.”

Here the man tried to get upon his feet but tumbled down again.

“Pitiful Hermes!” cried Nikander. “The wretch is starving.”

Dryas, still sobbing, caught nervously at the man’s bonds and pulled them off.

“Here, Son,” said Nikander. “Give him a drachma.”

The poor creature snatched the money and seeing the look of relenting in Nikander’s face, sprang up the hill with sudden life. He was quickly lost among the crags.

The incident soon got abroad in Delphi. The boys at school made a hero of Dryas. They had always liked him.

Nikander, however, could not help recurring to Dryas’s curious, passionate weeping. He told himself that it was natural. The young boy should be pitiful. But the weeping had not seemed to be pity. Something selfish, almost craven was in it. And a look in the slave boy’s face made Nikander think that the slave had done as much or more of the deed than Dryas himself.

Nikander pushed these thoughts from him and when Dryas’s praise came in from every side, Nikander gladly forgot them.

For from this time the Delphians began to take notice of Nikander’s younger son. His beauty was growing every day. He had a voice high, clear, unearthly sometimes, and he played the lyre with firm touch while he sang. He was only fourteen years old.

One day, as the priests broke up their council after the giving of the Oracle, the old Akeratus, president of the priests, detained Nikander. He told him that his boy Dryas had been chosen the “Laurel-Bearer” for the next Strepterion feast. It was the greatest honour the Delphians could give to a young Delphian boy. Then Nikander went home feeling that his cup of joy was full.

CHAPTER IX LAUREL FROM TEMPÈ

Theria’s joy, too, was full. The tie between Dryas and herself was very strong and his happiness closely touched her.

But, oh, the further marvel! Theria was to go up to the Precinct to see the sacred rite. She was older now. Had she not already dedicated her girlhood toys to Artemis? Soon she would be a woman and for women there were certain rare occasions when they might visit the temple place.

The new white himation which she was to wear she hung on a peg in her room. Gazing at this, fingering it, she could almost realize she was about to go to the Precinct. The joy caught strongly at her throat. Every day she begged her mother to name over each temple that she was to see, each treasury, each statue that flanked the Sacred Way until Melantho clapped hands over her ears and ordered her out of the room.

Theria never moved quietly about the house. She always ran or skipped. Now as she ran, she sang aloud or, leaping into her swing in the court, she swept upward like a swallow, until she could see high over the balcony into the second-story rooms. The whole house felt the contagion of her joy.

“I’m to attend little mistress,” boasted Nerea in the kitchen. “By Hermes, the best o’ the festival will be to see her face goin’ into the gates.”

The Strepterion was a festival which like the Pythia came every fourth year. At the Strepterion was performed the sacred drama, “Apollo Killing the Python,” the very same which Dryas had acted in play when a baby, and now he was to act it in earnest.

Midway in the Precinct was built a temporary hut called the Palace of the Snake. And the snake would be there, a marvel of contrivance, his ugly dragon head, with open mouth and teeth, resting on the threshold. Dryas, arrayed as the boy Apollo, must in mimic dance and gesture fight the dragon. A chorus of boys carrying torches would sing the story. Then after the struggle Apollo must lift his silver bow and shoot the dragon. It would die with great writhings and agony—a joy to the crowd.

Presently all the actors would come in solemn, silent procession down the Sacred Way. They would pass out of the gate of the Precinct, through the village, and away on the western road.

Thus would begin a long journey which would take from moon to moon. Symbolically, the actors would journey to the land of the Hyperboreans beyond the north wind. Actually they would trace an ancient way of pilgrimage, the Pythian Way, to the Vale of Tempè.

At Tempè Dryas, as the Sacred Boy, would gather boughs from a certain famous laurel tree, and bring them home to be woven into crowns for the Pythian victors. For the Pythian festival and games always fell in the same year, a few weeks later than the Strepterion.

All this was to be Dryas’s adventure. He would return to tell of its wonders. He was a dear, companionable boy. Theria knew he would tell her the whole of it.

On the morning of Strepterion she awoke before daybreak and lay in that ecstasy of anticipation which only youth-time knows. Presently dawned the light and showed her her white dress, still hanging ghostly on its peg. She arose and went out into the court-balcony. Here she met Dryas. He, too, had awakened early with the joy of the day.

“Good luck,” she greeted him. “The luck of Loxias.” And he answered piously, “Apollo bless you.”

Between them they roused the whole family.

At sunrise Dryas must be clothed in his ceremonial robes. He stood in the court near the Hestia hearth where all the family could see him, where the slaves could gather proudly to look on. They brought forth the temple himation, yellow with its border of gold, an ancient, precious thing.

Dreamily, sensitively, Dryas suffered them to put it on him, to unplait his long hair that it might flow over his shoulders in the manner of Apollo. Already he felt upon him the sacred character of the god he was to personate.

Nikander advanced to place the golden laurel crown on Dryas’s head. He came slowly, unlike himself, and in the ceremony spoke only the necessary words—no more. He made sacrifice upon the hearth and then, stumbling a little, stepped back.

It was time to go. The whole family were to walk behind Dryas up to the Precinct. Theria stood hand in hand with her mother. Her eyes were like stars.

“Son,” said Nikander in a low voice, “I cannot go with you now. I will come up in a few moments with Medon. The priests will meet you at the gate.”

“Father—but why?” A troubled look crossed the boy’s rapt face.

“I am not quite well. Just for a moment. I’ll be with you soon, my son.”

Theria darted out and touched his hand.

“Never mind, Daughter,” he said. “Make haste, all of you.”

Obediently the family formed in a sort of procession and left the house.

Oh, the golden sunshine of that early morning! The sweet cool air with the blessing of the stars still upon it! Theria took thirsty draughts of it as she went along.

The cliffs towered nobly about as if in prayer and along their face the mists, white spirits new risen from the vale, came shouldering, sinking, lifting, dreamily alive. So tall are the cliffs at Delphi that they meet the blue and cut off from sight the snowy peak of Parnassos which is back above them.

Now the procession turned the shoulder of a cliff. The Precinct burst into view—the Precinct, a golden and many-hued Elysium lying on the slope above the road within its quadrate wall.

It slanted against the hillside in the sunshine. Theria could see the bright little fanes, the golden tripods, the zig-zag of the Sacred Way dividing it in the midst, and the great Apollo temple at the top. The Precinct seemed to spread itself generously before her sight—all of it at once—as though knowing how dearly she loved it.

Above the Precinct were the cliffs again soaring terribly to the sky.

Now the procession was stopping. It was before the great bronze doors. The doors were opening, showing a glimpse of the wonder place within. Here a company of priests, with the old president or Hosios, received them.

They greeted Dryas. Then—

“But where is Nikander?” they asked.

“He said he would join us,” answered Dryas. “He should be with us by now.”

“We will wait for him,” said the old Hosios.

And so they waited. Moments—a half hour and still Nikander did not arrive. The priests began to stir impatiently. Dryas looked around with anxious eyes.

Theria slipped back among the slaves.

“Baltè,” she said, “he does not come!”

“Hist, little mistress, we must not speak in this place.”

“But, Baltè, perhaps he is ill.”

“Medon is there, and Philo.”

Theria suddenly recalled that her father’s hand when she touched it had been cold as ice. How curiously he had stumbled as he turned from the crowning—an ill omen that. Theria had a sure instinct concerning illness. She knew that her father was in trouble. All the joy of the festival and of the out of doors folded its wings in her heart. She could think only of her father.

Now she was dimly aware that the old Hosios had let open the gates and bade Dryas enter. She caught Baltè’s hand.

“I’m going back home,” she said. “Baltè, come quickly.”

“But, little mistress, what a crazy notion is this?”

“I’ll be back for the festival. Oh, I’ll be back in time. But I must meet Father.”

“But, little mistress——”

“Baltè, come at once!”

And Baltè, who never before had obeyed her little girl, came without a word.

They hurried back along the road. Nikander did not meet them on the way. Theria was the more terrified. Entering the house she heard music—the music of the physician. She ran to her father’s room.

He lay gasping upon the bed, his fine face drawn like an old, old man’s. His eyes, haunted with pain, turned toward Theria, but he did not speak; perhaps he could not. The physician in the corner sang nervously the healing ode of Apollo. Medon was clasping his hands.

“Oh, Missy, Missy,” he moaned. “The doctor gave the medicine and it did no good. Now he’s playin’ the music. When he does that—it’s the end—the end!”

The room was suffocating.

“Air,” thought Theria. “Father must have air.”

She stamped her foot at the physician. “Stop that wailing!” she commanded. “Stop it at once.”

The physician was glad enough to obey her. If Nikander died it could be the daughter’s fault.

Then swiftly, businesslike, Theria had them carry her father, bed and all, into the street and sent Baltè for hot water which she applied. She was trembling in very childishness of grief. Sometimes she flung herself upon her father, kissing him, begging him to live. But nevertheless she kept on with her simple remedies—remedies she had used before.

At last, so gradually that she could not tell when it began, the pain abated. Nikander’s eyes grew clear and his breath came even once more.

“Daughter!” he spoke at last. “My darling girl.”

And Baltè, putting down the steaming pot of water, gave a shout of joy.

Meanwhile up in the Precinct the festival was going forward, but Theria had forgotten it.

At length Nikander was strong enough to be carried back into the aula where he fell asleep. Then it was that Theria heard the sound of pipes and shouting in the street. Instinctively she ran upstairs to the window.

The sacred drama was over. Here came the actors—now a happy, laughing rout. It was the custom that the Tempè procession leave the city in haste so as to out-distance all evil. First Dryas came running in the beautiful leaps which Greek racers used. His hair was streaming in the wind. He held aloft his silver bow in triumph and great joy. Then came the swift boy chorus with backward burning torches and beauty of fluttering garments, then the sacred women having an awkward time of it to keep the boys in sight. And the crowd laughing at them and shouting:

“Good luck for the journey. The luck of Loxias.”

So shouting, laughing, the picture of joyous life, they disappeared down the road.

Ah, there was the last gleam of Dryas’s silver bow!

“At least,” thought Theria, “when Dryas comes back, he will have Father to greet him instead of—instead——”

Then with tender happiness—or was it the bitterness of missing her one festival—she hid her face, weeping.

CHAPTER X A BOY CALLED SOPHOCLES

One hot summer morning Melantho and her daughter were sitting in the upper room spinning. Or rather it was Melantho who was sitting. Theria was pacing to and fro at her task, stretching out the thread with free gesture, her fingers twisting, twisting like fluttering wings. Melantho noted how tall the girl had grown. “Her awkwardness, too, is passing,” she mused as Theria turned, sweeping the thin folds of her chiton against her supple limbs. So might Iris have looked, the slender goddess messenger, running to the divine threshold with news for the blessed gods.

But Melantho had no thought of goddesses.

“She will soon be old enough for a husband,” was Melantho’s thought. “I must speak to Nikander about it.”

Theria sighed and paced again.

“Theria,” said her mother, “if you would sit down you would not be so tired.”

“Tired,” spoke the girl, frowning, “Great Hermes, why should I be tired except from this eternal sitting? There’s no breath in this room.”

“Theria, you grow more impatient every day. Do you suppose your father can ever get you a husband if you frown like that?”

At the word “husband,” the girl gave her mother a startled, puzzled look. She said nothing. Melantho’s thoughts ran in given channels. Her next was of vegetables and fish which Medon must purchase this morning.

“Daughter,” she said, “go down and fetch Medon to me.”

Quick as thought, Theria dropped her spindle into the basket of snowy wool and sped away.

The morning was full of sunshine. Theria carolled like a lark as she tripped down the stair. Housed though she was, Theria never seemed housed. Perhaps the effect upon generation after generation of her forefathers of living out of doors, the strengthening, sweetening effect upon mind and body, had entered into her and made her part of the open air.

Through the inner court she ran and burst open the door into the outer court of the men. Here pure amazement stopped her motion. In the outer court stood the most beautiful boy Theria had ever beheld.

He had laid aside his himation for the heat, and stood in his short chiton, slender, delicately erect, gazing about his new surroundings with shy yet interested eyes. His hair, honey coloured, was cut short and filleted as if for a holiday. He himself was bronzed by the sun as all high-born boys should be. At sight of Theria he smiled.

“Forgive me, lady,” he said. “My father left me here to wait for him.”

“Oh,” said Theria, “I thought perhaps a god had done that.” At which speech he blushed, and became a little lovelier.

She came toward him. She was not shy, for the boy was younger than she. Besides, she was too delighted with his beauty to be shy.

“Whence are you?” she queried.

“From Colonos.”

“The grove near Athens?”

“Yes, the shady, sacred grove. The most beautiful place in the world.”

“More beautiful than Delphi?” she smiled.

“I think so, lady.”

“It is your home,” said Theria gently. “Therefore you love it.”

“My father came to consult the Oracle,” explained the boy. “He questions about his ship which comes not back to us. He is now with your father in the Precinct. For you are Nikander’s daughter, are you not?”

“Yes—his only daughter,” she answered with pride.

How modestly the boy questioned. His respect toward her was something new in Theria’s experience. Both her brothers were brotherly contemptuous. But this stranger was talking with her! To Theria this experience was nothing short of an adventure. She felt it so. Mind and soul sprang up vivid and intense. She began to ask her usual eager questions.

“How did you come to Delphi? Was it a long journey? Oh, was it by sea?”

“No, lady, by land—through Bœotia and over the mountains.”

“How many days?”

“Three days—we did not hurry. Yesterday at sunset we came to the Triple Way.”

“Where Œdipus met his father.”

“Yes,” he answered, “where he killed his father. Of course you know the story. Oh, lady, such a lovely place it is. Up there where the mountains pierce the sky; the road runs among the clouds. Where the clouds broke I could catch glimpses far beneath of the blue valley and the sun setting. Far down I heard the tinkle of goat bells—the herds hidden below the clouds. I seemed to be in the home of the gods. And do you know what I did? I let the others walk onward and I stood there alone. The three roads went this way and that from the place of my feet. Then I seemed to see approaching along one road old Laius and his men, and by the other road Œdipus, young and proud, fulfilling his curse. But before they met I fled. Oh, I could not bear to think that he would kill his father all unknowing! What if it had been my own dear father and myself? The curse of Œdipus, that terrible curse, swept down over me with whirlwind wings.”

The boy put up his hand to his head with a whimsical yet solemn smile.

“It touched me,” he said, “and when I ran up to my dear father and clasped his hand I was weeping. I would not tell them why. Yet I am telling you.”

“I wish I had been there,” breathed Theria.

“I wish you had,” echoed the boy.

And suddenly the boy’s gentle reverence gave Theria a joy utterly new—a sense at once of humbleness and power.

“Come,” she said childishly, seizing his hand, “there’s a swing in the other aula. Let’s swing in it.” Busily she hied him thither. But the boy would not swing.

“It’s for girls; I’ll push you,” he said.

Soon the court rang with their voices and merry laughter. The boy “ran under” and Theria flew like a tall nymph in great dips and soarings. Now her black tresses streamed behind, new they flung over her face—a dusky veil. After a while the boy stopped, breathless, and the swing “died.”

“Guess who came with us all the way,” he said suddenly.

“I cannot guess.”

“Pindar!” he told her joyously. “That’s what made the journey so wonderful. All those three days I heard his divine talk with my father. Never shall I forget it—all about Hellas and the Persians and the war that is coming. I hope it won’t come too soon before I can fight.”

“Pindar is ours,” said Theria with Delphic pride. “There is a chair set in the temple just for him. He sits there and the god gives him song. Tell me: did you hear him sing?”

“Often and often,” boasted the boy. “When we would stop by the road to sup and pour wine to the blessed gods, then a slave would bring Pindar’s lyre. A fine old one it is, always fresh stringed. He would sweep it with his hand and the thing would tremble as if alive. Do you think my hand is like Pindar’s?” he asked, stretching out his right hand. Slender and brown it was, expressive as his face.

“No,” said the girl honestly, “but it is a player’s hand.”

“I’m going to be a poet some day,” ran on the boy.

“I wish I might be a poet,” said Theria.

“You! But you are a girl. For you will be the house and children and the loom.”

“I hate the house!” cried Theria.

“What! The home of your fathers? How can you?” The boy was shocked.

“Oh, I don’t mean the home. I mean the house walls that keep me in. Sometimes I want to scream and struggle as though I were tied down hand and foot.”

“But nothing ties you down.”

“Do you call it nothing to stay all day twisting a miserable thread like this?” Theria spun with her fingers. “When there is so much, oh, so much in the world.”

“But do women feel that way?” he asked. “They always seem contented in the house.”

“Would you be content?”

“By the gods, no.”

“But are we not like you, we girls? We are strong—we like to run and breathe the air. Look at my arm, how ugly white. It has never seen the sun.” She flashed out her fair arm—free of its drapery.

“That is not ugly,” said the boy gently.

“It is! It is! White as a Persian’s!”

“No, it is Greek,” maintained the boy. “By the gods, I’d like to see you running brown and free like Artemis in the wood.”

“You don’t think I am foolish to want to run and leap.”

“No—no—no!”

Theria’s eyes widened with delight.

“You don’t think me foolish to read my father’s books?”

“Books!” Here the boy was puzzled. “Why should you read books? Poems are to sing, not to read.”

“Oh, I sing them, too,” laughed Theria. “Far back in the storeroom, when nobody can hear, I sing them. I have to make up the tunes.”

“I wish I could hear you; oh, I wish I could hear you.”

That any one should care for what she did! No praise could be sweeter, no joy. So absorbed were they both that they did not hear the voices calling through the house, “Sophocles! Sophocles!” until the searchers had entered the open door—that door which should always be closed.

“Eleutheria,” came her father’s voice, sterner than she had ever heard it. “The meaning of this! By Hermes, I must know.”

The two turned in confusion.

“Whatever made you think you could bring a stranger here into the inner court? How long have you been together?”

Theria answered none of his questions. She faced him, her eyes black lakes of astonishment. So intense a mood could not break at once.

“I have done no wrong,” she asserted. “How can you think I have done wrong?”

“But you have. You are almost a woman. You cannot receive my guests.”

“My guest he is, this Sophocles,” she answered with frightened face but steady voice. “We have been talking together about Homer and Pindar. Surely that is no harm. Where is our wrong?”

A low exclamation came from the corner of the room. Pindar himself was there with Sophocles’s father.

The boy spoke, blushing, “I am the one to blame. I came in here to push the swing—not thinking.”

“There is no blame,” repeated the girl passionately. “Don’t call it blame.”

Had Nikander been an ordinary Greek father, Theria would undoubtedly have received her whipping at this time.

“Go to your room, Daughter,” said Nikander quietly. “I cannot talk with you here.”

And Theria fled in an agony of shame.

Pindar’s voice broke the silence.

“By the deep-vested Graces, Nikander, but I think we have broken into a pretty dialogue. Would I had heard some of it.”

The boy, redder still, hid behind his father.

Nikander shook his head in whimsical despair.

“What am I to do with a daughter like that? I never know what she will do next. She’s perfectly good, I assure you. She only breaks rules like a colt.”

“She’s your image,” laughed Pindar. “Your own face faced you when she spoke. Ay, and your spirit, too. By Artemis, did you mark how she fled up the stairs with head held high?”

“She’s a twin, you know,” said Nikander. “The boy is more beautiful.”

“Ay, I know your Dryas. The coming beauty they say, and perhaps the coming singer.”

Nikander’s face flushed with pleasure.

“The lyrists tell me so,” he assented.

Thus Eros brushed his wings across Theria’s fancy and flew away. No business of his was this. But youth was here—fearful impressibility: A breath, and youth is changed.

Who shall say that when in after years this boy sang of a woman and gave her a new type of nobleness the image of this proud sweet maid of Delphi did not float before him and make his creation real?

And as for Theria, the encounter was a peep outward into the world. From this time she became more aware of the hurry of development outside in the awakening land of Greece. From this time she felt it—the joyous advance into the light, new art, new politics, new thoughts.

The amassing knowledge of centuries was converging to a focus and the heart of the Greeks soared into a mental atmosphere never known before or since. This intense point came in Theria’s lifetime. No wonder the light of it penetrated all her walls and restrictions. No wonder she struggled to be free to meet it. Her own youth was of the youth-time of Hellas and longed to be merged with it as flame yearns toward flame.

CHAPTER XI WHY NOT BE THE PYTHIA?

In times of war we picture every corner of a warring land torn with passion, dark with fear, dyed with blood. But this is not so. In Nikander’s household the four meals a day were served by quiet slaves, the washing was done down in the Pleistos River as the good housewife Melantho required it. Eleutheria received her daily lesson in spinning and weaving and damaged more good wool than any maid of all the generations of Nikanders. This indeed was Dame Melantho’s chief grief, despite the fact that her little land was cowering under the heaviest cloud of war that ever threatened a devoted country.

At every festival came crowding news of the great Persian king across the sea preparing his army to invade and devour. Into every port came sailors telling of the fleets of Phœnicians, Cyprians, Lykians, Dorians of Asia, etc., all of which fleets were making ready to pounce upon Greece. Then arrived the actual ambassadors of the King, demanding earth and water. Which was to say: “Consent to slavery and the Persians will leave you out of the fight.” Many cities gave these tokens immediately.

“Who, then, will resist?” “What will happen if any should resist?” “Will the gods help?” “Have the gods forgotten their beloved Hellas?”

Such were the questions which poured into Delphi. These days Nikander might be seen pacing to and fro in some lesche or near the Council House, seeing naught before him, blind to the beauty of hills and far-glimpsed vale. Then perhaps in desperation he would stride down the hill and along the road toward home.

In the women’s aula Melantho would greet him with the small worries of the day. A slave child was ill and she knew not what to do for it. She must have more grain to store away in the storeroom or Nikander would have to go without his special cake next winter.

“And will you have a cake now?” she asked. “And a little wine? Do, now; you look tired.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

And so she went out to make the slaves do all in order.

Meanwhile, Theria came in and sat upon a stool near by. She spoke no word but tried to untangle a thread from her distaff, parting wisp from wisp with slender fingers, and watched her father with keen, quiet eyes. Melantho returned chattering and Nikander ate his cake in silence, and still Theria watched.

She knew that the Amphictyonic Council, that famous council of many states, was meeting to-day in its house west of the town. Why was it meeting now? This was not the season. She knew that her father had been with it. He was one of the Amphictyons. There had been hot dispute, she could see that in his face. But had he won? And what was the strife about? She knew something of the danger which threatened the land. This she knew in spite of the fact that Nikander had been strict in keeping the news away from the household. He hated the aspects of fear: these would come soon enough.

Bitterly Theria longed to ask questions. She knew that there was no use. She knew that her father had come home for peace, for a respite.

After a while Melantho was called away, and Theria moved over beside her father on the bench and slipped her hand into his. He sighed restfully as she did so. Then care again settled like closing wings upon him. Theria decided that he had not won in the Council—at least not for to-day. She also decided that the controversy had been serious. She could not guess that it had to do with the whole policy of the Oracle in the face of the Persian attack. In that Council Nikander and one friend stood alone for the defence of Greece. All the others stood for surrender.

Theria’s first instinct was the woman’s, to mend her father’s disappointment by some diversion.

“Father,” she said, “I have been thinking all day of the birds that Homer tells of on the Scamandrian plain.”

He frowned and came out of his dream. “What is Homer to you, child?” he said impatiently.

“Nothing, Father; but I often think of those things. I love the birds,” she added quietly. “They are so merry and move so swift, so swift. They are kind, too.”

“Kind! What do you mean?”

“They come to me when I go to the window—oh, just a few moments at the window, Father, to breathe the air. Then I call them their own calls and they fly down out of the air, very timid at first. I put out my hand and hold it still and talk to them. Finally, one of them is sure to flutter near and sit on my finger with its little sharp claws. They watch me with clever quick turnings of the head and chirp to make me laugh.”

She leaned forward—very child in this childish pleasure. “Father, tell me what Homer says about the birds.”

“I am in no mood for Homer’s lines.” And indeed he was not. But presently he began to say them—

“What a picture!” he commented. “I never realized before how fine it is.”

Did his nearness to the ardent Theria bring this realization? Who can tell how mind may leap toward mind?

So they were sitting when Olen, the slave boy, came and stood beside them.

“Master, a consultant,” he announced, “at the street door. He will not come in.”

Nikander rose from the bench, strangely refreshed, and went to the outer aula. As Olen was following, Theria made him an imperious gesture and the slave reluctantly left ajar the dividing door. Then Theria moved to sit where she could command the outer room.

She saw enter a man with white, wrecked face.

“But I must not come in,” he objected. “O priest, I might bring it upon your house.”

“My house is not afraid,” said Nikander. He sat down, indicating the bench beside him, and the man sat down fearfully, like one unclean, at the farther end.

“It is a curse, O priest,” he said. “I am under a curse.”

Very skilfully Nikander quieted him, urging upon him kindness and wisdom of the Oracle, persuading him to speak. It was a terrible tale of this man Corobios and his friend Pythias—one of those Greek friendships so seriously considered that marriage was not allowed between the children of the two.

“We were on a journey,” said Corobios. “Five robbers leaped from ambush upon Pythias. It was him they were after, not me. I whipped out my sword and struck at one of them. And just at that moment Pythias was thrown in the struggle straight under my blade. It cut him to the bone. Oh, if he had only lived to exculpate me! If he had only spoken some word. But there was no time. I saw only his eyes raised to me in agony, in reproach. O priest—in terrible reproach. Ah, I see them now! Wherever I go I see them! The Eumenides are coming upon me. To my children’s children will the curse run unless Apollo will clean me.”

How Theria loved her father as he leaned toward the man laying his hand upon the shaking shoulder, fearless of the terrible curse which could run so quickly from man to man.

“The Son of Leto will hear you,” Nikander said. “Our god is pitiful of those whose hearts are clean. Do not fear. To-morrow you shall consult the god. I shall see that you go in first of them all to the Oracle. Your case is needy.”

The interview was long. For as the man grew quieter, Nikander did not fail to sound him as to his attitude in the coming war. Every pilgrim was so tested by Nikander. Thus Nikander learned the public mind.

At Corobios’s departure Nikander wandered back to where Theria sat. He was quite unaware that he was seeking his daughter again.

Theria ran toward him with overflowing eyes.

“Oh the poor man, the poor man! Father, surely the Oracle will help him—it must help him!”

“The poor man, hey! What do you know about the poor man? Theria, I will not have you listening from corners—do you heed me?”

“But why did the dying Pythias reproach him? Couldn’t he see that Corobios didn’t mean to hurt him? Couldn’t he trust his friend that much?”

“Probably Pythias didn’t blame Corobios at all. The eyes were in death-agony, already unconscious.”

“But will the Pythia tell him that? After all, how can the Pythia help him? Corobios is a murderer—poor man! poor man!”

“Corobios is not a murderer, Theria. Murder is of the heart’s intention, not the hand’s mistake. Nay, his hands are clean; cannot you see that?”

Nikander was forgetting the proper reproaches for Theria’s eavesdropping. The question of blood-guilt was a burning one at Delphi. It concerned a brand-new policy of the Oracle: that sin was a thing of the heart and not of outward accident. This moral advance is, in every age, the most important and most difficult for the human mind to achieve. Nikander was fighting more battles than the defence against the Persian.

“I wish,” said Nikander, “the people could see that the curse does not come that way—without fault of the accursed. Corobios is not under a curse.”

“Not under a curse?” repeated Theria. “Will the god tell him that?”

“How do I know what the god will tell him?” answered Nikander piously.

“Oh, if I were the Pythia I would pray the dear Son of Leto till he gave me that answer.”

“But you are not the Pythia.”

On a sudden the wish of many moons sprang to Theria’s lips.

“Father, let me be the Pythia, the next Pythian priestess. Oh, Father, you do not know how I can pray to the god and—and how——”

“Nonsense; the Pythian priestess is a stupid girl. You would never do.”

“But the Pythia need not be a stupid girl,” Theria was talking now breathlessly. “Father, when I pray, Apollo answers me. He does.”

Nikander took her chin in his hand, lifting her pleading face.

“What a queer child it is,” he mused. “What do you mean by Apollo answering you?”

“I don’t know, Father; but he does. Oh, with the coming down upon me of something out of the air like wings—no, not like wings—but I know it is the god.”

Her eyes grew mystic with a curious inner seeing.

“You strange Theria,” said her father. “If you saw all the visions of the gods it would not make you a good Pythia. You know perfectly well that the Pythia is a girl of empty mind. The mind must be vacant for the god to speak through it. She is but the mouthpiece of the god. Besides all this, she writhes in agony when the oracle comes upon her. Sometimes it kills her.”

“I wouldn’t mind if it killed me, just so I were Pythia,” Theria urged solemnly. “Just so I could speak for the god.”

“Well, you’re not going to be Pythia, my child. This whole question is nonsense. It grows out of nothing but your eternal desire to be doing something.”

Nikander was right. It was Theria’s burning desire to use the power that was in her which kept her constantly urging. Her face turned tragic and Nikander’s anger sharpened. He was under great stress.

“Now, no passion, mind. Theria, I have enough burdens in these terrible days without your foolish notions. Pythia—faugh! I’d be disgraced to have you Pythia. Silly girl!”

So he strode out of the house.

Theria ran to her room. She expected to cry but she did nothing of the sort.

“I will be Pythia,” she said, throwing her long arms above her head and clasping her hands.

“I will be Pythia—no matter what——”

The springs of poet inspiration are hidden and very strange. Could it be this opposition which drove Theria to make her song—the prize song of Dryas? The next day after these events that song came across Theria’s mind like the flash. Anger was part of its origin. Longing for outlet was another part. Strongest of all was the damming back of the birth-right power within her until it welled higher than its nature and broke over into song.

It was the following week that she showed her song to Dryas, and a yet further week when Dryas sang the song at the Pythian festival and Theria snatched it back again. The result was disastrous, as we have seen.

And after her father’s whipping, Theria strangely knew that she would soon do something to deserve another whipping.

BOOK III WITHIN THE ORACLE

CHAPTER XII “THE PLACE OF GOLDEN TRIPODS”

Theria awoke in the first grey of dawn. She sat bolt upright in her narrow bed. A dream had awakened her, or rather a purpose, a purpose full formed in sleep. Awake, even her bold mind could not have dared it.

Theria was going to dare to go out of the house! Out into the free morning. Under the sky. Away through Delphi. Up into the beloved Precinct. Oh, she would see all of it—this once!

The consequence? Never once did she think of consequence. She was simply doing what she did as if a god had pushed her to it, feeling vaguely that she was in the hands of her god. She sprang from bed and threw about her bare lovely body her chiton, pinning it at the shoulders. How her fingers trembled! Then around her supple waist went her zone, drawn tight; then came cloak and sandals.

The key to the front door was in her father’s room. Nikander slept soundly, but Melantho slept, like puss by the fire, with one eye open. “If they see me they will whip me again,” she thought. “Well, what of that?”

Noiselessly she stepped out upon the court gallery. Everything in the court stood strangely distinct in the dawn. Would she ever see again the little altar, the swing that hung motionless in its place? No one could tell what might ensue if she went out. Theria stole forward to her parents’ room.

Yes, they were asleep. The key was kept in the chest among the book-scrolls. With an instinctive prayer, she opened the chest and put her hand deftly among the metal cylinders. But one of them settled noisily into a new position. It clattered like a chariot in her ears, and she crouched terror-struck. Her father moved, sighed. The key was not there. In desperation she arose and pushed her hands behind some clothes on a peg. There, O Kairos! it hung. And grasping it in her hand, Theria disappeared like a shadow, and so descended the stair.

The porter would be near the door; but at this hour surely in his lodge asleep. And Medon was growing very deaf these days. He was hardly a fit porter, but Nikander would not grieve the old man by taking away his office. Theria had grace enough to feel a passing regret that Medon through this escapade of hers might lose his beloved duty.

Now she was at the door, fitting the great key into its hole. Careful Medon was asleep but lying almost across his door. Oh, if she could be quicker! If she would not so lose breath! But slowly the door opened. It did not creak—not very much.

She slipped through the crack.

Then, O Hermes, O gods of all open spaces and swift feet! She was out of doors. She was under the sky. So high that sky that she was dizzy looking up at it. Not the accustomed low ceiling of the room or the narrow opening above the court. It was the lofty treading place of the Immortals. All the air in the world met her first deep-taken breath—fragrance a thousand fold—the uprising spirit of the morn meeting her spirit.

She ran like a deer along the road in the grey silver light. A marvellous place in which to be set free. A vast amphitheatre of hills, spaceful and she in the midst of the space. On every side in a far-flung circle rose dim mountain forms to the silvery sky. On a nearer hillside, aslant like a picture, lay the precious sanctuary, framed four square within its clear-seen walls. But within all was dim and confused, for the cliffs which towered above it still had it in their shadow.

She stopped to gaze at it with that tenderness which we feel toward things asleep and with a reverence born of twelve generations of worship. Men of her blood and bone had here met the god and here had builded his temple. Hers the Precinct had been long before she was born. Hers it would be when she was dead a thousand years.

But how was she to get in? The Precinct was so strictly guarded, the wall so high. Her spirit shrank as she thought of it.

Suddenly Theria heard a footfall coming toward her and quick as a thought she turned down one of the steep streets. Once within the narrow blackness she could see a little—could see the house doors set down and down the terraces, and the Apollo statues standing pillar-like beside each door. No one was abroad in the street.

She passed down the better section and came below into the slave quarter. Here a stench met her which was almost more than she could bear. In this fetid place doors were wide open and crowded slaves snoring within. The sweat and weariness of slaves were the very smell of the place. Was it here that Olen and the kitchen slaves had to come after their day’s work was done? Now she passed some half-naked women asleep in the street. Great pity for them swept her, pity for their slave life and slave lowness. She stooped over one of them, gazing into her face.

The creature awoke with a howl of terror.

“Ye fool,” she cried. “Damned of Hades. If ye come home late as this can’t ye keep still? Ho, I’ll trounce ye.”

The woman leaped to her feet. Theria fled down the street, turned the corner, and fled down another, the woman in full chase, her cries arousing the quarter. Here was real danger. This was the place where thieves and ruffians hid themselves who came to rob the Precinct. But even in her fright Theria had no instinct to run home. She only fled farther away down the hill. She outdistanced the woman, who presently gave up the chase. Then Theria found herself below the town in the depth of the glen.

She was hurt as if the woman had struck her. Never had she heard loathsome oaths such as had been flung after her. Their meaning filled her with horror. Thus much had her cloistering done for her that it had kept her whitely pure. She crouched like a wildwood thing amid the bushes—confused, daunted. Then slowly her determination came back, and she began to climb cautiously upward.

At last she regained the highroad.

While this low adventure was chancing a whole new world had been made—a world of dawn, of faint rose and amethyst under an awakened sky, immense, marvellous, holy.

Theria had emerged directly below the sanctuary. Its great wall towered above her with glimpses over it of temple roofs. Above all rose the great Phaidriades cliffs, colossal, shutting out the east. Their colour now was the ripe bloom of a plum from their base up to where their clear-cut summits met the zenith. Theria stood clasping and unclasping her hands. She was a living spark of expectancy in that expectant morning world. Here outside the wall near the gate stood the victor statues. She could not but pause by one. She knew its place well, her supple, young great-grandfather, who had won the running match for boys. There he stood, long limbed, spare, archaically smiling at her and, for all time, fourteen years old. Dryas also would have a statue here among the music victors. Tenderly proud Theria marked the place for it near their ancestor. In her present mood she had no jealousy or regret.

According to custom, ancient and immutable, Theria must now pass by the Precinct and go onward some distance to Castaly’s fount before entering the sacred place. She wrapped herself in her cloak and hurried forward.

She easily found Castaly—a pool glassy-still in its rock-cut basin at the foot of the sheer cliff. It was quite deserted and hidden from the road. Birds fluttered up at her approach. A solemn place.

She looked about her. In mortal fear she took off her cloak and dropped her chiton to her feet. So, like a white nymph, very small at the foot of the cliff, Theria stepped down into the sacred pool. She met the icy water with a shivering cry, but she took the plunge. No one might enter the temple who had not first bathed here. She came out tingling, touched with ecstasy. For holy Castalia cleansed the soul as well as the body. Quickly she put on her garments, quickly walked back to the Precinct.

She dared not even think now of the difficulty of entrance. One terrible moment would decide. She mounted the six steps to the Precinct gate, dipped her trembling fingers in the lustral bowl—then knocked. They were great bronze doors opening inward.

At once came steps within and the clanking of heavy keys—the rasp of the unlocking. Then the doors slowly, stingily, opened.

When she saw the keeper’s hideous face at the crack, her courage sank in her.

“I want to come into the sanctuary,” said her faint voice. “I want to pray to the god. I would like to make a sacrifice.”

“Ye can’t consult no priests now,” said the man. “They’re just gettin’ out o’ their beds.” Behind the man she saw the glitter of the armed guard.

“I don’t want to consult a priest, I want to pray—to pray for myself and my house.”

“Women like you ain’t got no house. Now get along with you.” He was shutting the doors. Desperately she laid her hand in the crack. “I pray you, I pray you,” she cried. Then she tore off the himation which wrapped her head. “Judge you whether I have a house or no”—lifting her face—“I am a Nikander.”

“Great gods in Olympos!” quoth the keeper. “Ye sure be.”

He opened the doors slowly, hesitating even yet. The guard fell back.

“Line for line an’ feature for feature,” murmured the keeper of the keys. “That daughter of Nikander’s. It’s crazy she is. I’ve heard o’ her.”

Theria slipped through the narrow opening.

She was within! Locked into a wilderness of beauty. Multitudes of little temples, red, blue, and gold; multitudes of statues, some of hoary eld, some glossy new; statues of wood, marble, bronze, standing under graceful porticoes, or standing bareheaded by the wayside looking out dreamily from life-like eyes.

And over all the still holiness of the morning the unearthly light whose steady increase affected her spirit like a joyous, irresistible call.

A child set free in fairyland? Oh, Theria was more than that. A soul set in heaven, if ever heaven came down to earth; and, in sooth, it sometimes does. Theria’s soul leaped up from its depths. Suddenly she could not see for the tears which filled her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. She must not waste one moment of her seeing.

Right at hand stood the Athenian Gift after Marathon—statues of Athenian gods and heroes standing so friendly, mortal with immortal together in their portico.

“Ah, Athena, thou art dreaming of thine own hill in Athens,” she cried, moving closer. “No, thou must not. Be happy here, dear Athena.” Bred in the worship of images, Theria quite forgot that all these were not alive.

Here was Miltiades. He who nine years ago had won the battle of Marathon. He was a noble statue in the new manner. Almost a portrait, with his curling beard and fearless eyes. Theria touched his robe.

“It was thou who saved Hellas,” she said seriously. “Oh, thou couldst do it, thou hast the look.”

Suddenly Theria realized that the light was much increased. She had told her name at the gate. That would mean quick capture. She must hasten. Before her the white Sacred Way zigzagged boldly among the treasuries up to the lordly temple of Apollo above them all. In Delphi there is neither near nor far, but only below and above.

Swiftly Theria chose out what she must see and what she must pass by, perhaps never to see again. For though she might some day walk here in processions she could never linger as now. Every object had its story, “history,” she would have called it, for she believed them all.

Here near by was the Argive bronze horse given to commemorate the Wooden Horse which Odysseus made and gave to Troy. Everyone knew that tale. And here was the Sikyonian Treasury. Theria must see that, because it was the first little temple at the wayside and was very old. It was round with a circle of chaste pillars upholding the roof. She mounted the three shallow steps. The doors had been just opened, for some god had destined her to go in. The little circular cella held many treasures, but of these Theria saw only the central one—a book unrolled upon a marble table. The antique lettering was of pure gold. Eagerly she began to read. No one had told her of this book. It was the epic poem of Aristomache of Erythrai, a woman! Aristomache had won the prize at the Isthmian games. Of course it was long ago. But a woman had won it! The poem, how lovely, how much more noble than Theria’s; but a woman’s, a woman’s! Theria would try again, try to reach the high goal this woman had set. Oh, she would try soon! She was heartened and came out of that treasury with shining, purposeful face.

Theria had lingered here longer than she had intended. In haste she had to pass the treasuries higher up the way, the Knidian—a little temple exquisite as a jewel lifted high upon its tower-like foundation, its porch upheld by tall, long-haired maidens—“Korai,” she called them.

She began to meet caretakers on the way, yawning after their night watch, going to their homes.

Now came the first turn upward of the Way. Here stood her beloved Naxian Sphynx, the one the top of whose wing she had always glimpsed from her window. How wonderful now, close at hand, high on her high pillar, her breast covered with brilliant feathers, her blue wings flung up lofty to the sky, her woman’s face dreamily smiling. Ah, well she kept her wisdom to herself, Mistress Sphynx! Theria knew she was dreaming tenderly over the silent dead. For she was Gê, mistress of earth and underworld.

Theria climbed dreamily higher up the Way, passing now the threshing-floor where Dryas had enacted the play. Memories, stories, faiths—all these swam together in her mind until she dreamed herself away and became part of the poesy about her.

Now the Sacred Way made its last steep turn. From here the whole Delphic Vale burst into view. The Way here ran upward and clung against the wall-like foundation of the Great Temple, but on its outer side was a veritable Olympos, full of gods and godlike men, statues which would remake art if we could but see them now.

All were in action. Achilles on horseback and his beloved young Patroclos running beside the horse and gazing up at him. Apollo and Heracles both grasping the tripod (for they had once had a quarrel over it). The mother Leto and sister Artemis were trying to quiet the angry god, and Athena was quieting the boisterous hero. The eyes of these statues were set with living coloured stones and looked in anger, command, compassion, whatever they willed. No wonder Theria shrank from them a little afraid.

Suddenly Theria was aware beyond the statues of the great depth of vale—the Pleistos a silver ribbon visible for miles, the hills away and away, and ah! the direct golden sunlight in long level shafts flooding the vale. The sun had risen high over the mountain. Her time was almost spent. She fairly ran up to the remaining Way to the platform of the great Temple.

She stood breathless, awed before the greatest temple of all Hellas. It was pure Doric. Grandeur spoke from its mighty columns, repose from its perfect roof. It was at once solemn and tender—man’s thought of God made visible. And indeed the god breathed forth in every line of it. No mere thing of white marble was this. Gorgeous it faced the sunrise, crimson of column, blue and orange of architrave, and golden griffined at eaves and peak.

The doors were newly opened and he who had opened them was busily brushing the threshold with a laurel branch for broom. He was singing softly to himself. Happy young priest at his happy task!

Theria came softly nearer. She knew what was in the temple, every bit of sacred furniture and age-old thing. She wanted to see each object, to treasure it in her heart for ever. The young priest saw her and stopped his sweeping in amazement.

“May I go in?” she asked.

“You know very well you may not,” was his answer. Unlike the rude porter he knew that Theria was a lady. “I cannot imagine, Despoinia, how you managed to come up here.”

“I cannot imagine either,” she answered. The joy of it overcame her and she laughed a gay ripple of laughter. This angered the young man.

“You had no business to come here,” he said severely. “You have disobeyed in coming, that I know, or you would not be alone.”

Just at this moment an eagle circling down from the cliffs above made a swoop like a falling stone for the altar where the early sacrifice lay. Instantly the young man seized a bow, near at hand for such adventure, lifted it Apollo-wise, and shot the bird. The he bounded down the temple steps to seize it.

And Theria quick as thought darted into her beloved fane. How lofty it was within, the flickering light from the hearth-flame playing everywhere and meeting palely the day that poured in at the eastern door. This hearth-flame was eternal and must never go out. An old priestess was tending it. Theria paused by the famous navel stone which marked the centre of the earth. Who knows how many thousands of years men had worshipped it. It was a rude stone, but immeasurably holy. Two golden eagles were perched either side of it—commemorating those whom Zeus had sent to meet at Delphi. Farther within, near the Statues of the Fates, was Pindar’s chair, waiting for him always to come and sit and sing inspired songs—the songful Apollo welcoming the human singer and giving him of his own divine fire.

Theria bent and kissed the chair for the love she bore the poet. As she did so her shoulder was seized and roughly shaken.

“What do you mean by coming in here when I had forbidden you?” said the furious priest.

Theria was too startled to speak.

“Answer me!” he shouted.

“I had wished for this,” she faltered. “Perhaps I can never come——”

“I should say not.”

Theria came to herself and stood like a tall goddess.

“How dare you speak to me like that?” she cried. “How dare you?”

But the priest seized her shoulder again. “Get out,” he stormed. “The priests even now are coming up the road with visitors. Get out, I say.”

Theria had no time for either dignity or resistance. The youth pushed her out of the cella, across the temple porch and down the steps.

She fled across the platform. A single glance showed her the whole Precinct below. The little shrines, unearthly in new golden light, the bronze tripods all aglitter. Yes, and the Way! The priests coming up the Way. She was in terror—not of punishment, but of more unkindness. She was almost sobbing.

CHAPTER XIII IN PLEISTOS WOODS

She sped across the road and hid behind the Phokian offering. She could hear the priests’ pleasant voices talking of Delphi. From where she stood a little path set out here behind the shrines and treasuries. She followed it to the Precinct wall and went searching for a side gate. Found one at last. The keeper was almost asleep.

“Let me pass out,” she commanded. “Let me pass at once.”

The man spat. “Now, Missy, this here lock’s rusty. You go on down to the big gate. It won’t be far.”

“I will not go to the great gate. Be quick or I shall have you punished.” Theria’s voice had a ring of command. Besides, she did not speak the dialect of women, but the speech of men.

“I will, Missy; I will,” hastily said the man, fishing the key from his belt and fitting it. Noisily it creaked. Theria twisted her fingers in nervous fear. She could hear footsteps again. The Precinct was filling.

“It’s awful rusty, Missy: I can’t—— Ho, Hermes! there it goes.” The door swung open and Theria darted out.

Her Precinct hour was over. Where now to go? What to do? She was bitterly lonely. “Dryas can come to the Precinct whenever he will,” she thought heartbrokenly. “And Father brings him there and tells him all things. But I—I am hounded out as if I were a thief.”

She would not go home! No, she would not go home—not yet. She crossed the highway into the eastern end of Delphi town, and passed down through it to the glen.

The glen was deeper here, even wilder than where she had seen it below her home. It was so steep that no buildings could cling. It was given over to wild olives and laurel trees with gnarled roots, and to huge rocks, the gift of earthquakes from the cliffs above. Theria pushed doggedly down through it, tearing her hands, bruising her feet. At last, after a special tumble, she kirtled up her long chiton, pulling it up through her belt, took off her himation and formed it into a long roll which she tied about her waist. She was amazed at the ease this gave her. No wonder the Goddess Artemis could leap after the stag in this her special costume.

Now she was in the midst of stark, slender pine trees which soared from the vale into the height to feather out against the sun. She paused with upturned face.

“Are they always so solemn-thoughted, these dryads here?” she asked herself. For of course each tree had its dryad and the mood of the tree was the dryad’s own mood. “Do they always pray so seriously to their father Zeus?”

Theria would never willingly have come into the forest. No Greek would have exchanged the man-beautified sanctuary for this wild. But once here the forest mysteriously received her. She who had never before known the sweet ministration of trees began to be strangely quieted. The forest distances, infinite yet hidden, mobile, shifting with her every step, what a relief after the rigid walls of her house. How twilight-dim it was. Yet sunlight filtered through the dimness—pools of gold among the tree roots, shatterings of gold on boles and boughs. Beneath her feet, which had never trod aught save floor and pavement, was the deep pine-needle mass springy under her step. She looked down, wondering at it; a carpet no hands had ever woven, or perhaps a carpet woven by some delicate god.

So the forest silence entered her heart—the silence which is not silence at all, but the deep breathing of all living things. She seemed to have grown wings which would make her essentially free no matter in what house of stone or clay.

But no, it was not the forest itself which received Theria. She could never have conceived such a thought. It was rather the thousand delicate dwellers of the wood—dryads, fauns, satyrs, nymphs. These were touching her with unseen hands. These were they who dogged her footsteps with invisible service, who ceased from their gay dances, slipping into invisibility, that she might move across their place. Did she not see their lairs among the ferns, and the footprints perhaps of Artemis herself where she had crushed the starry mosses? Most of these beings were sinister. They could lay spells upon you. They could whisk you away into sleep. But to-day they had no mischief in their hearts. They were only kind.

Gradually came sweeping across the silence the voice of a rushing stream. Theria pushed forward eagerly to behold it—a lovely living thing, leaping, running, singing, between its banks. It was the same little stream she had seen falling down Castaly’s gorge, here set free on the hillside. Who has not been touched by the immortal force of moving water? Surely Theria was touched by it. She knelt by the stream, stooped her dark head low, her breast among the fern, and drank. The ineffable fragrance of the waterfall met her—a fragrance new to Theria.

Did not the gods breathe fragrance such as this? Ha, the nymph Castalia—her veritable presence!

Theria sprang to her feet, hiding her face. At any moment Castalia might be visible. No, no; Theria would not spy upon her.

Fearfully she said the accustomed stream-prayer, then took off her sandals and waded across. No Greek would cross a stream without first asking its pardon. Once on the farther bank she quickened her step, and began to breathe again. A narrow escape was that from a supernatural sight!

So noon came lordly into the sky, and afternoon. Theria found herself in the enclosure of Athena Forethought, the farthest shrine of Delphi; or its first, if you came from the east. The Forethought Fane, a little circular temple, was far above her on the road. She could scarce see it for crag and tree. Here, weary with wandering, Theria sat down to rest.

CHAPTER XIV THE POOR SLAVE

And here so late, she met the adventure of her day.

Sounds of distress brought her quickly to her feet. She hastily wrapped herself in her himation. She peered down the slope and could see the figure of a man moving wildly about among the trees. Now he lifted convulsive hands on high, now spread both arms abroad and groaned. Greek woe never repressed itself. It rather flung out, wind-swept, fiery, real. “But,” thought Theria, “this must be some physical agony.” She remembered her remedies at home, yet what could she do for the man in this wild place?

She started down the hill. Nearer at hand she saw that the man was a slave, rough bearded and clad in an old slave cloak. Her adventure with the cruel woman of the morning came back to her. A slave might hail from any barbaric coast. Wild deeds, wild, unthinkable crimes were committed by slaves. Theria stopped in fear but at that moment the slave saw her. His arms dropped to his sides, he gazed at her wide-eyed, terrible—then suddenly pathetic.

“Forethoughtful One,” he faltered, “hast thou come to punish or to save?”

What did the man mean? The “Forethoughtful One” could be none other than Athena herself. Theria laughed outright.

“Surely you do not think I am the goddess?” she queried.

The mistake was not unnatural—Theria, slender amid the slender trees, the light behind her, and all in the Athena Precinct. However, the man looked a little ashamed.

“Forgive me, Despoina, my lady. I am beside myself, I—you startled me.” He was still wondering at her. “You are a priestess?”

“You can see I am not,” she answered, businesslike. “You are ill. I thought I might help you.”

Again he wondered at her. Then his face changed back to its misery.

“I am not ill, Despoina, not bodily ill. My courage is gone! The gods know how I shall ever pick it up again.”

“What took your courage?”

He began to pace again.

“A slave’s tale; a miserable slave’s tale. Why should you hear it? Oh, Mistress, you can do nothing, nothing.” Yet he burst out with the telling.

“My freedom money. It is gone! Gone, I tell you. My damned master knew all the while where it was hid. He let me work and hope and hoard it. And now when all but two drachmæ are there”—he held out his hand with these last coins—“he came and seized it. The beast! How can the just gods let such a man walk the earth?”

Theria came nearer, interested, absorbed.

“You mean that you earned the money to buy your freedom?”

“Yes, Despoina—to buy it from Apollo.”

He was referring to one of the noblest customs of the Oracle. Both of them knew it well. A slave might sometimes be so fortunate as to get money to buy himself from his master. But the Greek master could seize him again and once caught, the slave had no redress. But Apollo of Delphi would buy slaves. They could come to his temple and pay the money down to the god. The terms of the transaction were engraved on the stones of the temple foundation for all men to see. Then the slave went free, protected by this divine ownership. No former master would dare touch him. Wherever the former slave might go, he was under divine protection, Apollo’s ward.

“How long did it take you to earn the money?” she asked.

“Four years, Mistress. Oh, gods! four long years. I cannot do it again, and, if I did, would not my master seize it as before?”

“How did you earn it?”

“My work is in the pottery, lady—the pottery there below the hill toward Kirrha.” He showed her his hands marred with the clay. “It is I who make the best pictures on the pots.”

“I like those pictures,” spoke Theria. “They are beautiful, those gods and men that you make.”

Tears ran straight down the man’s dirty cheeks. Praise was rare for a slave.

“Do you think so?” he queried. “Do you think so, my lady?”

Theria did not answer. She was thinking.

“My father, now. If you could bring your money to my father, each drachma as you earn it.”

“Do you mean me to begin all over again, my lady? Then I will. If only my master does not take me away from the pottery. He wants me for a body servant. He is always threatening to take me for a body servant!”

“But to be a body servant is easier,” said Theria. Privately she was wondering what sort of a body servant this uncouth man would make.

“I hate to be a body servant,” he said loathingly. “Besides, I would not then know where to turn to earn extra money.”

Suddenly Theria clapped her hands with a cry of delight. “I have it! I have it!” she said. “I can help you myself.”

The man gazed at her as if his faith in her goddesshood had quite returned.

“I have jewels,” she went on, moving her hands in her excited telling. “They are ancestral jewels and were given me at my birth. I am supposed to give them to my first daughter at birth. Well, my first daughter can do without them. They are rich pearls. They are worth more than the price of a slave.”

“Lady, lady! Oh, they would free me at once!”

“Yes, free you at once. But the matter is dangerous. The priests may think you have stolen the jewels. If they do, call for Nikander’s daughter.”

“Yes, blessed one.”

“And when you go to the Precinct ask for Kobon as your priest. The Kobons are angry with us and have never been in our house. Kobon will not recognize the jewels.”

“Yes—yes,” he said as if in a dream.

“But how to get them to you. Mother will not allow me, Father will not—Baltè, no; no slave would dare to do it for me. Besides, I hate to let slaves know anything. They are so apt to tell.”

The man started out of his dream.

“I will not tell, Despoina.”

“You,” she laughed. “No, of course not, you will be hastening off as far as you can go. You will be free.” Then she added quite unintentionally, “Yes, you will be free and I will be in my room again. Shut in—always shut in!”

Of course Theria did not say this to the slave. She said it to herself, because on a sudden she felt weak and discouraged, felt her capture very near. The slave, however, took note of her saying.

“How strange,” he said. “How strange—I never thought——”

“What is strange?” she demanded.

“I never thought, Despoina, that wives and maidens cared to walk abroad. They keep the house and seem all content.”

It was the same comment that the lad Sophocles had made, the very same. It roused her sudden anger and flood of speech.

“Oh, yes. Be content, be content! Even a slave dare mock me with that. And you yourself, what do you want with your freedom? Why aren’t you happy making pots? What is the difference between making pots and spinning wool? What is the difference between obeying a master and obeying a father, brother, uncle, cousin; every man that is your kin? What have I to look forward to? What to do—to do?”

The man fairly trembled before her outburst.

“Despoina! Dear, dear lady,” he kept trying to make her listen. “I—fool that I was not to understand the beautiful one. Despoina, hear me!” Something in the man’s ardent voice frightened Theria. She stumbled to her feet. But the man came nearer.

“Despoina, ah, poor lady, you have been away from home many hours, have you not?”

“How dare you question me?” She walked away. She was dizzy, staggering. The man was following her. What would he do, seize her? Carry her to Nikander’s house for reward? Perhaps do worse than that? “Do not go,” he urged. “Mistress, you are famished. Forgive me, but we slaves know the look.” He snatched from his wallet the rough brown bread, the day’s slave ration. He pushed the bread into her hand.

“I pray you eat it. Not fit for you. Oh, I know that, but if you do not eat you will faint here in the wood.”

She turned to him. Then suddenly she laughed.

“Hungry? Why, of course, I never thought of hunger.”

She sat down, broke the tough bread, and began to eat. The man ran down the hill to the stream and returned with a little cup (one from his pottery) brimming with fresh water. As he offered it he trembled and spilled it awkwardly.

“Forgive me, lady. I am not a house slave.” How breathless he seemed from his short run. “Dear lady,” he added gently as to a child, “do not eat so fast; I will guard. I will let no one come. I have cheese, too, but I was afraid to give you that. I could not eat their cheese at first myself.”

But she took it eagerly. It was atrocious stuff, smelling horribly and perfectly green of colour.

“Isn’t it strange?” she said. “It tastes as good as the daintiest fish. I never was hungry like this before.”

“My lady was never in the forest before,” said the man. “The house breeds no appetite.”

“I have been long without food,” she confided to him now. “I ran away before dawn and I never thought to eat. I walked up into the sanctuary and saw all the gods and temples and golden tripods. Oh, if they take me home and whip me now and put me in the dark, they can never take that away from me.”

“Whip—great Zeus, who would dare do that!”

“No one, no one,” she quickly answered. “Of course, that was only jest.”

But his eyes still held the horror of it as he watched her.

“Do you know,” she said, as she finished the last morsel, “this bread has given me all the rest of my precious day. With my hunger I would have had to go home.”

“May it give you your hours,” said the slave devoutly. “You who are giving me a life of freedom.”

Something in his manner of speech caught her notice. It was well tuned and he used quaint words which she had never heard before.

“You have not always been a slave,” she concluded.

“No, Despoina, that is why it is so hard to be a slave. And when I saw the years ahead once more I cursed the gods. Then you came, and I thought you were Athena come to punish me for the cursing. Even now, dear lady, I would not be amazed if you were to grow suddenly tall and rise upward through the trees.”

He made an eloquent gesture. Then his eyes grew fixed, staring at a place up the hill.

“Who is that?” he whispered sharply. “Do you know them?”

She followed his look.

“Baltè!” she spoke almost with a sob. “And Dryas, my brother.” Then she collected her thoughts and began to talk quickly.

“The jewels! I have not told you how to get them. There is a little street beside Nikander’s house. And a window in the house that side. Come at twilight. I will throw them down to you.”

She had hardly said the last word when the slave disappeared among the bushes. Then she forgot him. Dryas was there with his scorn, Baltè with her tears. She had to face both.

CHAPTER XV THE SHATTERED CUP

Bitterness and confusion were Theria’s portion when she reached home. Melantho was ill from anxiety and stormed alternately at Theria for her misdeed and at poor Baltè for not taking better care of her. Dryas was very superior and very wrathful. The slaves whisked hither and yon, some delighted with the fuss, others scared as to which way the storm might strike. Lycophron treated everything with amused scorn, whether of Theria or her tormentors could not be told. Nikander was away.

“But the whipping he’ll give you when he comes,” declared Melantho, “will make that other whipping seem a caress.”

Theria waited in a dumb terror. Not of the whipping, but of her own reaction to it. She would fight back. Oh, the disgrace of that! Deeper than all was the fear of losing the last of her father’s love.

She had been sent to her room and poor Baltè watched her like a Cerberus. No chance to be throwing jewels from windows even if Theria had thought of it. As a matter of fact, she forgot it utterly.

It was next morning before she met her father.

His face was darker than she had ever seen it. He seemed to look at her strangely and from a great distance.

“Oh, yes, Theria,” he said, putting his hand to his head. “I am in too great anxiety to care whether you are punished or not.”

“Father,” she exclaimed, instantly concerned for him alone. “What—what has happened to you?”

“The Medes are at our door, child,” he strainedly answered. “And at present I see no one who is going to resist them.”

She laid hand upon his arm, but he hurried away out of the house.

All that day Theria was in disgrace. Her mother set her an extra long task of weaving and with extra severity made her ravel out all her mistakes.

These were many. Theria could think of nothing but her father’s worried words: “The Medes are at our door.” The phrase rang over and over again in her ears. The Medes were the Persians. Did Father mean that the Medes were in Phokis—or on Mount Parnassos itself? How soon would they fall upon Delphi? Oh, if she could only question her mother. But her mother would know nothing about it.

In the midst of her worry her promise to the slave concerning the jewels flashed across her mind. “But it was last night I was to give him the jewels, last night, poor slave. He must have come—and gone away again. Will he come to-night? Oh, surely he will.”

She went immediately to her room and took from her jewel box a necklace. It was of pearls strung upon horsehair. A mother-of-pearl amulet depended from it. This she tried to remove, for it was characteristic, easily identified. But a sound along the corridor made her swiftly hide the necklace and all in her bosom. Moments alone were rare to-day. She must have the jewels ready. Of course the adventure pleased her. She was young and she was—Theria!

After the family had dispersed from the last meal of the day she sped away to the back storeroom. There at the window she waited. Never had so many steps sounded in the house, coming near the door, passing and repassing; never had the lane reëchoed so loudly the footsteps from the highway. Again and again she thought people must be entering the lane itself. Once Nerea came into the storeroom to fetch wheat for the kitchen. But it was by no means unusual to find the little mistress sitting at that window, and Nerea went innocently away.

Down in the lane the shadows crept closer. Deep twilight now. There among the jagged rocks at the lane’s end was a denser shadow. Suddenly bird-swift the shadow darted forward and stopped under her window. She leaned out.

“Hist! is it you, slave?”

The bearded face uplifted itself, the hands as well. She could see this in the dimness.

“Oh, marvel of kindness,” came the low voice, “I knew you could not fail.”

“But I forgot yesterday. Hold your hands up close together. Careful, now.”

She dropped the pearls and he caught them easily. But he stood still in his place.

“They did not whip you yesterday, Despoina? Tell me they did not,” he whispered.

“Of course not, Fool! Go quickly, you will be caught. Go!”

He flung his hands upward again. Poor creature, the gesture was a very speech of gratitude. Then he slipped back to the enfolding rocks.

Theria suddenly recalled how once she had found a bird in the court and had taken it to this window to set it free. Even so had it flung itself off and was gone. Her fancy pictured the slave hiding for the night among the rocks; then, at break of day, hurrying down to the Precinct to purchase freedom from the god. Ah, by to-morrow he would be miles and miles away. He would not wait for the jewels to be questioned. That problem would be hers.

She went off to bed singing softly a little tune.

Next afternoon Olen, her father’s slave, came into Theria’s room. He seemed furtive in his errand.

“I was to give you this,” he said, and handed her a small two-handled bowl. He was for hurrying out, but Theria stopped him.

“What is this, Olen?” she asked.

“You know best, Mistress,” he said, hiding a smile.

It was a shallow bowl, one of those made in the pottery below the hill. Within the bowl was a delicate figure of the goddess “Athena” so the letters said above the figure. She was bestowing something upon a supplicant who stood before her.

“Who gave you this bowl, Olen?” asked Theria, puzzled.

“A man, Mistress, a sorry-looking slave with clay matted in his hair.”

Theria turned the bowl about. On the under side was an unburned painting of a youth standing tip-toe with arms outstretched as if to fly. The drawing was exquisite, but exquisite drawings were common in Greece. Above the youth was scrawled:

Theria blushed slowly, angrily red. She held forth the bowl and broke it to shards against the house wall.

“Olen,” she said sternly, “never bring me messages. Never bring me gifts.”

CHAPTER XVI GATHERING THE THREADS

Nikander had spoken of the Medes but in a voice so low that none but Theria heard.

Theria, Nikander knew, would not give way to fear. However, she did give way to curiosity. She questioned Medon, but Medon would tell her nothing. “Your father has forbidden us, Missy,” was his word. She plied Olen with questions, but Olen backed away from them with a skill which slaves acquire. As for Baltè, she could only say:

“Oh, darling, it is tribes and tribes of men, all the men in the world coming against our Greece. And the king at their head is a god. Where he will he knocks a mountain over, like that, an’ when he will he makes the sea dry land for his tribes to walk over. He is goin’ to burn every city of Greece.”

Theria, what with her love of her land and her love of mere knowing, felt actually ill from all this bafflement.

Late in the afternoon she caught Lycophron walking across the aula.

“Lycophron, stay with me! Talk with me only a little while. I’ll have Olen bring wine and the fresh cakes.”

“Now, Sis, what are you up to?” he asked. Her eyes were wide and starry. At such times they had the look of being new opened like a child’s.

“And Circe put wine before the Mariners,” he quoted, laughing. She finished the lines.

“You rogue,” he said. “I believe you know the whole of Homer by heart. Very improper for a girl.”

“No, I don’t; I only know most of the Odyssey. But don’t talk about that, please. Oh, please tell me of the war.” She caught his arm pleadingly. “Nobody but you will ever tell me anything. I am not afraid about the war.”

“But you’d better be,” he said shortly.

“Old Baltè says the great king is a god who makes the land a sea and the sea dry land.”

“Well, do you know, that is truth—almost. Xerxes has dug a canal across the peninsula of Athos, behind the stormy mountain, to give safer passage to his ships, and he has built an enormous bridge across the Hellespont for his tribes to walk over. They were nine days and nights passing over the thing, a constant stream. It seems foolish for him to transport so many men to Greece. He could conquer our little states with a fifth of that number.”

“Do you mean he brings too many?” queried Theria keenly.

“Gods, no! The great king knows what he is about. He’s an enemy to be reckoned with! I don’t say we should throw up our hands and Medise all at once. But surely we should treat with him before we try to fight him. Why should we go out with a handful of men and ships to be butchered? Schutt!” he snapped his fingers scornfully. “That Tempè business! Do you know about Tempè?”

“No,” breathlessly.

“Well, they started out—the Athenians and the Spartans together and—— Now, Sis, you may as well know that the Persians are coming really against Athens and Sparta. Them only. None of the rest of us are in this fight at all. And I say there’s no need of our throwing ourselves into it like geese. Well, they start out, these Athenians and Spartans, and go to the Vale of Tempè where they say there is a pass where they can keep the Persians from coming through. And when they get there they find two passes into Greece instead of one pass to defend. So back they come like whipped curs. I can hear the Persian king roar with laughter when he hears of it. This was last week. The news of their fizzle is all over Hellas. It’s taken the heart out of everyone. You’ve seen a hare sitting with ears up ready to run. That’s the way we are!”

“Oh,” breathed Theria. She was leaning forward, drinking the news. “That is what ails Father. That Tempè failure. Not that he is scared,” she corrected herself. “But so troubled, so deeply troubled.”

“Yes, he’s troubled. The difficulty with Father is, he is trying to butt into a stone wall. I suppose he’ll see after a while, the old dear!”

“Don’t call him that, Lycophron. Father isn’t old. What do you mean by butting a wall?”

Lycophron stretched out his hands, yawning: “Oh, Sis, you want to know the history of the Oracle since the time of Gaia,” he said. Then suddenly a shrewd, purposeful look came into his eyes.

“Look here, puss. If I tell you about it will you try to help Father? Father’s going against the Oracle. The Pythia says one thing but Father thinks another.”

Now Theria’s faith in her father was second only to her faith in her god. “He wouldn’t do that,” she exclaimed. “How can you say that of Father? Father is——”

“Now, now; don’t get so hot all of a sudden! Wait till you hear: Athens has sent to Delphi asking—‘Shall we fight the Persian and if so how will we come out?’ The Pythia gave them a discouraging answer. Then the Spartans came. Discouraging answer again. Something about ‘a king shall die to save you.’ But not clear. Now Father wants them to keep on asking again and again until better answers come. That’s pretty near sacrilege!”

He paused a moment.

“All the answers are the same, Sis. The answer to the Cretans: I heard that myself, heard the priestess give it. Confused, of course, but after the priests deliberated over it, clear as a whistle. ‘Keep out of the fight,’ it said. ‘Do you want to be whipped as the Phokians whipped you?’

“Now Father is horrified at that. He says the Oracle meant nothing of the kind. He had a terrific argument against all of them in the Council. He’s making enemies right and left. What worries me is that man Kobon. The Kobon family have always hated us and Kobon—well, he’d like to destroy Father. Now here is his chance. Sooner or later he’ll do it unless Father stops what he is doing.”

Theria was speechless with horror. Lycophron leaned toward her earnestly.

“Look here, Sis, why don’t you talk with Father? You. I can’t talk to him any more. He won’t listen to me. Try to tell him what I’ve told you. Of course he’ll be angry. He’ll say you know nothing about it. But it may count if you tell him you’ve been warned. He’s bitter discouraged now. It may count. Will you do it?”

“Yes, oh, yes!” she said.

Lycophron kissed her. He was really an affectionate fellow and considered his sister a charming child. Then he hurried out of the house.

Her father was in danger! Her father might be destroyed! This fact overtopped all others in Theria’s loving mind. Even the impending war was dim in this presence. And at nightfall Theria learned that her father had gone away from Delphi. He had gone on some mysterious business. Lycophron had seen him depart but even he did not know Nikander’s destination.

For the next two weeks Theria was well-nigh impossible to live with. Her temper took fire at everything.

“I cannot sit and spin,” she declared. “Ah, gods; but I cannot!”

She threw down her distaff, defying her mother’s authority. In her room she paced up and down, maddening for activity. “If only Father were here,” she would repeat. “If only here, so that I might plead with him to keep out of danger.”

But if Nikander should come, would she dare to question him and his state policies? Never in her life had she doubted her father’s wisdom. Theria had in some way gleaned a knowledge of Nikander’s far-reaching powers—Nikander who seldom thought in terms of the individual but nearly always in terms of the state. But now his statecraft was bringing him into personal danger. That very danger made him seem to her in the wrong. Yet to question him face to face, that seemed to Theria the height of impiety. What could she, an ignorant girl, say to so wise a statesman? Yet persuade him she must. He was in danger—in danger!

From this perturbation Theria found her old solitary place in the back storeroom an only refuge. Here she could at least breathe the air, could see the turbulent stream, could watch the gradual increase of nooning light or its golden decline.

CHAPTER XVII A YOUTH UNDER THE WINDOW

One evening she had sat there until the violet twilight gathered and the stream down in the lane ran uproarious among the damp mists. Presently she heard footsteps and looking down saw emerge from the hill a youth, a beautiful lithe fellow, walking with that swift grace that youth is heir to. He looked directly to her window and threw out both arms as if in surprise and greeting.

Theria retired at once. She was quick enough for adventure, but not this sort of adventure. She had no taste for romantic secrecies. But the youth stopped under her window.

“Lady,” he called, low but intensely. “For love of the gods do not go away! I have not come to harm you.”

Something in his tone—earnestness, a tragic need—brought her back to the window. There he was standing with upturned face, beautiful in the twilight. But now having her in sight he did not speak. He only lifted up his hands toward her with an energy as though he would spring upward.

Could this be her cousin Agis or Caramanor, one of those with whom she had played as a child? Was he bringing her news of her father? He seemed to have come with purpose.

“What news have you, Cousin?” she asked anxiously.

“The news that I see your face—your face!” answered the astonishing fellow. “Oh, all my happiness harks back to you. All my freedom to be a man is of your making. Do not wonder that I thank you—that I must see you and speak my thanks to your face. Every breath waking and sleeping I thank you.”

“But who are you?” asked Theria, amazed. “Are you mad? You have nothing to thank me for.”

He was the more delighted.

“Ahai, my lady! you do not recognize me. Nay, forget the one you saw before. You with your jewels have made me a new man.”

Then Theria’s mind leaped back over the two weeks and she guessed.

“But, love of Leto, you cannot be that slave!”

“No, no; I am not he, I am free!”

“I don’t believe you are that slave. You have no look of him. You are straight. You are young.”

“I had almost forgotten I was young. I had kept that disguise so long. And how I hated it—the dirt, the miserable matted beard, the stooping. It took me days to stand straight again.”

“Was it not bad enough to be a slave without making yourself like that?” said Theria disgustedly.

“Dear maid, I had to keep so. They would certainly have sold me into Persia. There is great price in the East for beautiful men.”

He said this frankly of himself as a matter of course. Indeed there was something startling in his beauty—an ethereal quality, though he was manly too, but now so full of delight that he seemed like a child. He began hurriedly to tell her of himself.

“Dear lady, I was not born a slave. You will believe that. I was taken at sea by pirates—the whole ship seized. They put us below in the dark hold of their ship and fed us on nuts. That first night I blacked my face with the nut-hulls. I exchanged garments with the meanest man among us. I——”

“But why?” asked Theria.

“I had heard the sea-robbers upon deck above talking of me—and how they would sell me to the Persian Court.” A horror crossed the youth’s sensitive face. “Lady,” he said, “the Persians would have shamed me and made me worse than slave. I would do anything to escape that. In the morning, when the pirates came down looking for me, they thought their beautiful youth had jumped overboard. Stupid Phœnicians.”

This Odyssey was holding Theria fascinated. She forgot all the proprieties. She forgot that the youth might be love-making. Her mind had moved so many days in a doomed circle that now it spread wings of new life.

“But you got home again. How ever did you manage that?” she questioned.

“For long I was a galley slave. But one day, when the ship stopped at Corinth, I won the captain’s attention and told him of my skill in making gods of stone. Then he sold me to an image maker, and the image maker again to the owner of the pottery here. Oh, those days at the pottery! Those endless days! The dirt, the sweat, the low talk, the beatings if work was not swift enough. For I was not a swift worker. I had to make even those poor slight drawings as beautiful as I could. My only life was in them. I would dream over them. Then the overseer would beat me. But those days are over. Think of it, lady. Can you think how happy I am being away from that?”

“Great Hermes, yes! And then you went up the Precinct with my jewels?”

“Yes, blessed one. The next morning after you gave me them the good god freed me. I came down out of the Precinct gate knowing that I was free. I went straight to Argos. I think I sang all the way. Argos is my home.”

His face saddened unexpectedly. “Dear lady, I had been long away. I found that my father was dead and also my lady-mother, for grief at losing me—and—and I found something worse than that—even than that. Great Hera!” he lowered his voice. “Argos had Medized. My father’s dearest friend confessed it to me. The Argives say they are bargaining for the headship of the All-Greek army. They are really doing nothing of the kind. They have Medized. They have made a real compact with Persia—nothing less! Lady, I had lived so long in dread of Persian slavery and there at home to meet it again! But I will not meet it,” he cried with sudden energy. “I will not! So I have come back here to Delphi. But I loved Argos so dearly!”

“Of course you did. Your home! Dreadful! Argos Medized!” Theria hardly know that she spoke.

“I’ll fight the Persians here. Here in Delphi. You will surely need every man you can get. I shall become a Delphian. I have a little fortune, lady,” he added, very businesslike. “My father’s good friend saved it for me. I can buy citizenship in Delphi.”

Then suddenly the moral of the tale was out.

“And, lady, with my fortune and my citizenship, I shall ask your father for your hand in marriage. But not against your will. I will not enslave you who have made me free. Oh, dearest lady, love me, love me, love me!” he hurried on. “Cannot you see what the Cyprian has done to me toward you?”

Theria rose from the window as though the youth had struck her.

“How dare you, how dare you?” She gasped. “Words not meet for a maid to hear.”

“Lady,” he called so loud that she came back to her window for very caution. “Hush, hush,” she whispered. “Will you disgrace me?”

“No, no; lady, I pray for you, I bless you to the immortal gods.” He beat his palm against the house wall for emphasis. “Can you stop the stream of Castaly flowing down from the cliffs?” he questioned passionately. “No more can you stop the stream of my love. It will refresh and bless you whether you will or no. Ah, what I would do for you, dear child, if I only might.”

He tossed With a skilful fling a bunch of fresh ferns into her window. Then he was gone.

If the stream of Castaly had indeed fallen on Theria’s head she could hardly have been more shocked. She stood in the middle of the room angered into tears, hurt, strangely frightened. How dared the man return her kindness in this fashion? When a man wanted a friend he took a man, creature of his own mental stature, not a girl.

Well did Theria know that love-making was disgraceful and not for high-born maids. Pure girls dreamed of marriage, of course, but not of love. Theria had dreamed of neither. She picked up the scattered ferns and tossed them out of the window. Their delicate scent of the wild wood met, her as she did so. Suddenly she longed for her mother’s touch and voice, even her scolding voice. She hurried out of the room.

But as she went to sleep that night she remembered only that Argos had Medized.

CHAPTER XVIII GATHERING MORE THREADS

The next morning Nikander returned to his home. He retired at once to rest after his journey. Theria met him as he came forth again from his room in the late afternoon. It was plain that no sleep had been his. He was haggard. There was something in his face which cut Theria to the heart. She put herself directly in his path.

“Father,” she said, “I know your trouble. Do not hide it from me. You think I cannot help you, but, oh, let me try.”

The love outgoing from her face and from the little trembling gesture of her hand—these he could not choose but see.

“You say a great deal when you say that you know all about my trouble,” he smiled.

“Don’t laugh at me, please. I am a grown woman. I am sixteen years old.”

“What is it you want to know, child?”

“About the Persians,” she said breathlessly. She was daring the question now. What a fool she felt herself to be! “If they’re really coming against only Athens and Sparta couldn’t the other states stand aside—and keep out of it—wouldn’t it be best?”

His face went black.

“Theria, who has been talking to you?” he demanded.

“Nobody, Father. We hear things in the house. We can’t help hearing them. I heard, too, that Argos has Medized. I wanted to tell you that. The Pythia’s answer had nothing to do with it. They Medized long before. They are in actual league with the Persian!”

Nikander looked as if she had dashed water in his face.

“By the thundering Zeus, how did you know that? The priests only made certain of it last night.”

“It’s because I want so much to know, Father, that I learn. And I know that you are in bitter danger from Kobon. Are you sure”—she caught her breath before the plunge—“are you sure you are right? Are you sure that all the states should fight the Persian? Wouldn’t it be better to treat with the Persian just as the Oracle bids us do?”

This time his eyes flashed with anger. “Am I to hear myself flouted,” he said, “by the very women of my household?”

She suddenly threw both arms about his neck in a passion of tears.

“No—no—no—I am not flouting you! Kobon! He may kill you. Any day he may kill you.”

“That side of the question is not to be dwelt upon,” he said severely. He put his arm about her, but his face was like a mask.

“Come with me,” he said.

He led her into his room and shut the door. She could not tell whether he would punish her or not.

“Do you know what is meant by ‘treating with the Persian’?” he demanded.

“No.”

“It means to be his slave, to submit to his rule in ways that would ruin the freedom of Greece. We Greeks could meet in our Councils—oh, yes, we could meet! But the Councils would count for naught. The Great King’s word would be law. It would mean that we would be called out to fight the King’s battles, not our own—that he would take our young men to his court and make eunuchs of them, take our young girls for his concubines. Don’t you think that any state of Greece should prefer death to such a fate?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she whispered with wide eyes. At last she was to know the truth.

“Yet this is the fate you tell me Argos prefers. I suppose,” he added whimsically, “you know all about the Council at the Isthmos of Corinth, from which I have just come.”

“No, nothing of that.”

“Then I will tell you. Athens, Sparta, and all the lesser states who want to defend our Hellas have sent representatives to this congress. They are making our plan of defence. They have sent envoys to all the doubtful states of Greece, begging them to join in the fight. Now, here, my child, is my grief and should be yours—these states, Argos, Crete, and others sent at once to our Pythia to ask whether or not they should enter the war. And in every case the oracles have been negative. It has been so when there was no need.

“You know, my child, that oracles are not always clear! Just as prayers to the gods are not always answered. And when the oracles are not clear, surely it is because the Son of Leto wishes us to use our own wisdom in the interpretation thereof.

“These oracles to Argos and Crete came forth in confused utterance and could have been interpreted into splendid words of courage to those states. We could have forced them to join the League.”

Nikander’s voice began to ring with his message. He forgot it was only to his daughter, Theria, that he was speaking. She meanwhile thrilled and quivered with the sudden enlightenment. Yesterday she had been for the moment persuaded by Lycophron. But this from her father was the truth, so clear that she ought to have known it without any telling.

Nikander went on:

“But all the priests were for bending the oracles the other way. They fashioned them into drivelling nonsense, only adding enough of sense to warn the states away, to make them afraid to fight.

“Oh, that our Delphi should come to this.

“The priests themselves are scared. Many of them have visited Persia and remember its vast power. I, too, have visited it. What of it? Cannot they see that in a pass like this the gods will fight on our side?

“But among all the priests, only Timon and I are for the nobler part. I am not accustomed to failure. I do not know how to bear it.”

His head bowed, but it lifted again quickly.

“But we have not failed yet, Timon and I. There are yet Athens and Sparta for us to help.”

Suddenly he seemed aware of his daughter. He took her hand.

“Athens and Sparta prefer death to the Persian rule. They are going to fight the Persian though he be twenty times their number. Do you see nothing fine in that, my child?”

Her wide-open eyes answered him.

“Up till now the Oracle has disheartened them both. It shall not dishearten them again. Athens and Sparta will certainly visit the Oracle once more. If I have to die in giving them the message of the god, that is a small matter. The message shall be given.”

Theria moved toward him in awed, shining acquiescence.

“Father,” she said clearly, “if you have to die that way, I will not cry out any more.”

Nikander framed her white face in his two hands.

“My darling child!” he said in a kind of amazement. “How strangely you understand.”

She felt his hands tremble; then he smiled almost merrily.

“But I do not intend to die, Theria. I intend to win!”

Her trust in him now was too complete for her even to urge her own help upon him.

“I will not ask you again, Father, to make me Pythia, but if I can help you that way or any way, you will let me—you will let me?”

“Persistent Theria! You cannot help me by being Pythia. How many times must I tell you that the Pythia is the empty mouthpiece of the god.”

“Yes, Father,” she consented.

“You can help me,” he said, “by keeping up the courage of the household. Do not let the slaves talk. Don’t let your mother cringe and worry. Most of all, do not be surprised at anything. I’ll tell you now the fullness of it. The Persians will come to Delphi. No amount of treating will keep their greedy hands off this rich spoil. Our streets will know their footsteps, our temples and households their desecration.

“They are a great horde. All the armies of the past taken together will not make the sum of them. Yet we must fight them. There is no other choice, my child. Can you keep a brave heart and stiff will?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Yes.”

She went back to her room exalted and actually refreshed. The danger was so great, so certain, that it bred not fear but only a deep solemnity.

Nikander, however, walking out into the street, was not encouraged by this conversation, but miserably cast down.

He had received sympathy; but not from his sons had he received it. The fullness of Theria’s understanding but made him feel the more keenly their aloofness. This poor child, a daughter! wanted to help him by becoming the Pythia—futile effort! Yet the only one open to her. His sons, had they desired, might have been already in the priesthood, fighting by his side for this—the greatest cause the Oracle had ever known.

Meanwhile, he must fight alone. In bitterness of heart he made his way through the midsummer heat up toward the Council House.

CHAPTER XIX THE SONG RE-SUNG

Theria’s first thought was to deal with Lycophron. That afternoon she met him in the outer aula. He questioned her first.

“Sis, did you speak with Father?”

“Yes, and oh, Lycophron, Father is right about the oracles. You haven’t quite understood. He explained——”

“Shu!” he interrupted. “I might have known it would turn out that way. You take Father for a god.”

“Don’t talk that way, Lycophron. You know yourself how wise he is. You know how the priests have always looked up to him.”

“Do they? Now? In this crisis?” he demanded.

“No, but that is the more reason we should stand by him. We should think and act with him. Lycophron”—she caught the corner of his himation, twisting it in her fingers—“you could really go into the Council yourself if you wished. You are old enough. Your vote would help his.”

“But I wouldn’t vote his way, Puss.”

“Do talk with Father,” she pleaded. “He will make you understand. He talked of it with me” (she said it proudly). “How much rather would he talk with you. He would make it all clear.”

“Now, Sis, it’s you that are butting into a wall. Father and I don’t agree in these matters. You’re a smart little girl, but don’t try to meddle in things too big for you. By the way, when are you to be betrothed?”

She paled quickly and Lycophron laughed. Theria’s reluctance to marriage was a curious streak of idiocy in this quick-witted sister of his. Lycophron thought it comic.

“Great Hermes, what a face you make!”

“Father hasn’t said anything about betrothal, has he?” she queried.

“Well, I won’t say whether he has or not,” he teased, “but I shall remind him. I met Theron the other day, ‘When am I going to get my beautiful wife?’ says he.”

“Oh, Lycophron, please, please!” she begged, all in a tremble. “Don’t remind Father, do not tell him what that man——”

“Why, Sis, you little fool, a betrothal is a fine festival. And you would be coming right down among the men. It would be the merriest time you ever had in your life—and you the centre of it all.”

“Who would want a merry time,” she retorted, “when the Persian is coming to tear us to pieces?”

“No; don’t you be scared to death like Dryas.”

“You know I am not scared!” she said so indignantly that Lycophron patted her shoulder approvingly.

“There, there, Sis, I won’t remind Father. But, honestly, I do think it is a shame that he forgets to betroth you just because he is so busy in the Council.”

“I’m glad he forgets,” she said vehemently. “I’m glad he forgets.”

After a moment she asked with anxiety:

“But is Dryas really scared?”

“He doesn’t say so, but I can tell that he is. He turns white about the lips.”

“Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry,” she answered. The break up of the family front was more serious than she had supposed. “But,” she concluded, “Dryas will stand by Father whatever happens.”

For a week Theria kept away from her storeroom and its beloved window. Cruel, that the impudent stranger should deprive her of her refuge. The storeroom was her place of intimate solitude. It was saturated with her thought, her dreams, her songs. The little window and the lonely street—all were hers.

But after a time her fears lessened. Surely the youth would not keep coming all this while, or if he did, she had only to tell her father. Nikander would punish him thoroughly. Yes, and perhaps his daughter also for being at the window at all. Oh, but the youth must have forgotten. Why need she be anxious? The evening was very hot. The air seemed to press down heavily into the amphitheatre of the mountains. One could hardly breathe.

Theria found her window. Darkness had fully come and the hoped-for breeze. She had sat there some moments before she realized that the Argive youth was in the lane below. She shrank back, but his first word startled her into speech.

“Lady Eleutheria, I have asked your father for your hand,” he said. “But oh, dear maid, he tells me that you are betrothed.”

“I am not betrothed! I am not betrothed!” she cried vehemently. “There has been no betrothal.”

“Thank the good gods for that,” was the devout answer.

Foolishly she began to argue.

“But that does you no good.”

“No, but at least it does not snatch you quite away. I have learned to hope, Eleutheria. When I was in the galley-hold all day rowing until my back cracked, then it seemed as though I could never be glad again. But I am glad; thanks to you. In the same way I shall hope that some glorious fate will bring you to me, though so far from me now. I shall make you love me.”

“But I do not love you,” said Theria desperately, “and you must not come here any more. This window is my solitude. You shall not come to it.”

“Do not say that,” he pleaded. “You cannot imagine the joy it is to come. I have worn a path on the hillside coming, coming to you. And as I come my heart lifts and lifts as with a dawning light. Ah, you do not understand it; nor did I, dear child. It is something stronger than I—than you—— Each morning,” he hurried on, fearful lest she leave him, “when I awake and remember that I am free, then your cry comes back to me that you are shut in always, always, without hope. My heart breaks. I, too, had been shut in without hope. Therefore, I long to free you.”

“You compare me to a slave,” she said sternly.

“No, no,” he cried. “If I could only take your hand and show you the beautiful temples of the gods, the cities which I know, the sea. Lady, have you ever seen the sea?”

“No,” she answered, very low.

“Once I had a friend. He was taken prisoner with me on the pirate ship. But he died of the wounds he got shielding me—and I still love him. I thought I could never love any one in all my life as I love him; but you, dear maid, you are more than that friend. It is strange to say that. But you are my friend and my life. I am no longer my own.” His voice changed with awe. “Dear lady, it is not Aphrodite’s passion that is come upon me, it is the gift of some god loftier than she—perhaps Eros the Creator. Try to understand.”

Just here the moon sailed clear of the housetops over the way and filled the narrow lane with light. She could see him standing there, his head thrown back to see her—his golden hair bound and crowned. His very standing was elastic, spurning the ground. So much had his few weeks of gymnastic restored to him of Hellenic health and attitude.

She could see the curious, searching light in his face—a light of tenderness such as she had never known but which she recognized as all maidens do. Oh, why did her heart leap? Was she, too, in the power of a god?

Now he startled her yet more.

“Dear lady, I am coming to this house to-morrow night, I am Nikander’s guest.”

Delphians, though proud as Olympians, were yet the most cosmopolitan of Greeks. They were taught by the Oracle to receive all men hospitably.

Theria’s dread increased. What would her father think? What might not this strange youth tell!

“I shall ask to hear that song,” added the youth. “The prize song which you made for Dryas, your brother.”

“I made no song,” she asserted, loyal to her house.

“Oh, yes, you did. All the Precinct whispers that. But I shall know, dear maid, whether the song be yours. If it came from your spirit, it will go to mine.”

Steps were heard in the lane. She cried out a low warning. Her anger swept back again that the youth should thus bring her into fear. But he was gone almost before her cry. He was among the hills.

Theria turned, dazed, from the window. There on the moon-lit floor lay flowers strewn, one bunch upon another—faded ferns, fresh anemones, violets half dry. Evidently a gift for every day. If the youth came in this fashion sooner or later someone would see him. They would punish her. Worse! They would laugh at her. A street song, a vulgar old catch, struck across her mind, one of the common gibes at women:

Ahai! so she had thought herself different, better! She was like all other silly women. No wonder the men gibed. Only for a moment had she been guilty, but it was such a vivid, unforgettable moment. The moon had shone so bright upon him, the youth had looked so impossibly beautiful. Fool! The youth was plainly mad. Never would she allow herself to see him again.

Wrathfully she gathered all the flowers at one sweep and flung them far out of the window. Theria had heard of physical love. She had heard of no other kind. How was she to understand this sudden placing of her upon a pedestal? How should she guess that the youth through the suffering of slavery, through the purity of his gratitude, had stumbled upon an emotion old as creation, beautiful as dawn, strong as life, which the Greeks had utterly quenched and set aside?

Next day, sure enough, a feast was preparing in the house. Theria watched fearfully. Was the Argive really coming among the other guests? She tried to keep out of her father’s way, but she had to face him at luncheon.

Nikander, where his family was concerned, was very frank and childlike. “Well, Theria,” he said, “what do you suppose has happened? A young man comes asking for your hand.” Theria’s heart thumped so that she had to stop eating.

“His name is Eëtíon.[2] He is from Argos, one of the handsomest youths I ever saw. What do you think of that, Daughter?”

“I do not know,” she managed to falter.

“My dear, why tremble?” smiled her father. “The youth does not concern you. But the fellow is curiously headlong. Of course I did not discuss dower with him. But he offered it. He said: ‘I want no dower. I have seen your daughter in a festival procession. Her beauty is enough without dower!’ Now in what procession could he have noticed you, Theria? I do not quite like it that he should have seen you.”

“I do not know,” she said, again bowing her head. She was in mortal fear lest he see her fear. But he turned to Melantho—

“By Hermes, Melantho, I do like the youth. He quitted Argos because he is too loyal a Hellene to stay there. I like that. Timon knew the young man’s father, says the family is one of the most upright in Argos. The boy shows his race. Beautiful fellow, astonishingly beautiful.” (The Greek could not but dwell on beauty whenever he met it.) “The children of such a youth would be glorious children.”

“But, Father, must I—must I marry an Argive?”

Nikander threw back his head with laughter. It had been weeks since Theria had heard him laugh.

“No, Theria, your children would be glorious, but they would not be legitimate. Eëtíon has purchased citizenship in Delphi, but he is still metic, a foreigner. Of course, you will not marry him.”

Nikander voiced the pride that was in every Greek citizen—the pride and the isolation. No man could take full citizenship in a city not his own. No marriage with a foreigner (born say fifty miles distant) was counted legal by any government. This fact, instinctive in Theria’s mind, had steeled her heart against the Argive. Oh, what right had he to come to the house even as her father’s guest? She dared not object. She was not supposed to know of his coming.

The dinner guests assembled early. Theria and her mother had their supper upstairs. Then Theria went off to bed so as not to hear anything of the feast. But she could not sleep. She did not want the youth to hear her song. She tossed and tossed on her hot couch. What must they be doing now at the feast? Talking of the war? Ah, yes, that surely. They would not be singing songs in these war-troubled days, even at symposia. If she had only dared to ask Dryas not to sing. But was he singing? Oh, if she only knew.

Impatiently she rose and crept to her father’s room. Here came up the mingled voices and laughter from the men’s court. Oh, what was that? Why were they suddenly silent? That lyre, tuning. Then clear and fateful came the sound of Dryas’s singing,

The thing always thrilled her; so intimately hers. “I shall know, dear maid, whether the song be yours. If it came from your heart it will go to mine.” The Argive’s saying was ringing back upon her. He was down there now, listening, close to the singer. Almost she could see the listening in his face. And oh, the song was giving him what she did not want to give—her intimate, sweetest thought. He would grasp it all. Had he not asserted that he would?

She clapped hands upon her ears and fairly ran back to her room. He had no right, that Argive foreigner, to read her soul that way. No right!

She lay in her bed trembling. It was long before she could reason with herself and believe that this was a foolish, childish fear.

CHAPTER XX LOVE IN THE LANE

Theria paced to and fro in the large upper room, weaving. She had unskilful hands for this craft also as well as for spinning. Her figures of gods were stiff, her colours never true. But these days the long task was grateful. The whole household seemed hushed, as before a storm. Even Melantho now knew how near the Persians were. She, too, must be told. “Last week they were at Pydna, to-day we hear they have reached Larissa in Thessaly.” So the vast armies approached nearer, nearer, fateful, certain, awful, and the tiny land toward which they came seemed crouching with arms upheld to ward off a blow.

But Melantho was unexpectedly quiet. She had taken charge of the house as never before. And there was need. The slaves were irritable with fear, disobedient. This morning Olen had run away.

As for the Argive youth, Theria had not seen him since the night of Dryas’s singing. She had forsworn her beloved window. Better so than to see him again. That one moment of piercing beauty in his face. Ah, that had taught her the danger. Tender-conscienced child that she was—she was remorseful for every moment that she had lingered at the window listening to his speech. Those moments were not worthy of Nikander’s daughter. One day she went into the storeroom to fetch a book-roll which she had left there. The floor again was strewn with flowers, faded and dewy fresh, as though thrown there each day.

That the Argive youth should keep coming. This haunted her. Patient, persistent, each evening, lonely in the lane. How was she to drive him from her thoughts?

She looked up from her weaving. Her father had opened the curtain of the doorway. He came toward her. There was in his face a finality which brought her to her feet.

“Father! The Persians!”

“No, child,” answered Nikander’s low voice. “The delegation of Athenians is in Delphi.”

“Yes, Father, I knew that.”

“They have received their answer from the Oracle. Child, the message needed no interpreting priest. It was fearful and fearfully clear. The Pythia in her own voice, in ecstasy upon the tripod, warned them out of the shrine. ‘Quit Athens,’ was her cry. ‘Flee afar; fire and sword shall come upon your city—and not yours only, but many cities. My temple sweats blood; get ye away from my holy place; and steep your souls in sorrow.’”

“Father, how dreadful; horrible!”

“The priests, of course, are horror-struck. But they are triumphant, too. They have prevailed over me. The Athenians! Theria, the Athenians dare not go home with that message. We have told them, Timon and I, not to go home with it. That message would put their armies to rout before the Persians should strike one blow.”

He stopped. His face took on a deep regret, almost abhorrence. Then he said hurriedly:

“Theria, I have come to make you the Pythia. It is a last resort. You say you can pray. God grant you can! Oh, my child, put into this consecration every effort, every spiritual strength you know!”

She was so dazed that she could only stand before him trying to say “Yes.”

“You will leave the house early to-morrow morning. You will have your days of rites and preparation. But the Athenians will await your days. We will enter the Precinct as supplicants—you and I. The Athenians also as supplicants. Supplication may win the god.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, gazing deeply into her eyes. But his mind was far away, wrapt in the purpose for his state.

“Theria, the honour of the Oracle, the very saving of Athens and of all Hellas are in your hands. Pray, pray!”

At the door he paused again with bent head. “You will have your wish now to stay a virgin. And you can never come home again.”

She was alone. It is in such moments that one grows old. Maturity is not of years but of such experience. She was neither happy nor sad. What she had desired so long seemed strangely impossible now that it had come to her. There was no exaltation for the great task.

She kept naming the task over to herself. “I am to win the good oracle which will save Athens. Apollo will give me a good answer if I supplicate.” But she felt very dazed.

Now she laid aside her hated weaving. It was the last time. The Pythia did not weave. Greater tasks were hers. Theria’s home which had seemed so prison-like, that, too, she was leaving for ever. Very quietly she walked along the balcony to her own room and there stood thinking.

How distant her father had seemed. The great state-sorrow weighed him down. He was beyond thought of her. Yet there had been something tragic in his face as though he were laying her as victim upon the altar rather than lifting her to the tripod.

A fearful thing that tripod. It stood in a dark cavern, and the breath of the god rushed up from a gulf below and filled her who was set there. How would it feel—that breath upon her? What would it do to her, that ghostly thing? She shook her shoulders as if to free them of a load.

Oh, dear Paian, what if it did harm her? That was nothing, nothing! Could she win the good message? Could she by prayers, importunity, and ritual-supplication win from the god the better fate for Greece? Apollo had already given forth the terror and warning. Could she push that evil back as with her two hands?

All the courage, the confidence, which had so easily been hers sank out of her. Her heart, which had been like a pool reflecting the sky of the god, was suddenly empty. She longed to go to her mother to hide in her arms. But Melantho (how well she knew) would only weep and add weakness to her own. Her father? It had been her father’s detachment, his way of laying the task impersonally upon her, forgetting the daughter upon whom he laid it—it was this that made her lonely. She thought of Dryas, of Lycophron, of Baltè. She could only hide her face in her hands, rejecting the thought of each. And the black loneliness grew at each rejection.

“Is there someone else? Isn’t there any one else?” she thought wildly.

And like answer to her thought came the clear picture to her closed eyes. The Argive standing in the moon-lit lane with face upturned to hers. “Can you stop the stream of Castaly? Even so will my love refresh you whether you will or not.”

She lifted up her face timidly in the empty room. Ah, he had loved her. He had come again and again with his love. So faithful, so patient, and how true he was to Greece! How ready to fight for Hellas! If she should go to the window to-night, would he give her strength—strength for her fearful duty? But how could he? Would he reach up his hands? What could he say?

Suddenly she was trembling so that she had to sit down, clasping her hands, unclasping them again. How could he do anything except to put arms about her as she had longed for her mother to do? But these arms as they stole about her spirit were not like Melantho’s. They thrilled her, brought her near to weeping. They were the arms of love, the love he had told of, the love that understood the inmost of her heart. She began to long so intensely for their comforting that she was frightened. The barriers of her coldness went down at once, leaving her as tender as young spring. Unconsciously she reached out her hands in the dim room.

Then a panic assailed her. Perhaps he would not come. Perhaps her long refusal had broken even his faithfulness. Perhaps he would fail her for just this one evening. Then it would be too late. To-morrow she would be locked in the Pythia House. Then even to see him would be sin.

To-night! Oh, could she go down into the lane and greet him there? But how? The house wall was too high for her down-clambering or for his ascent. The front door was guarded by Medon.

She would ask Baltè to take her. Surely on this her last night at home Baltè would be kind.

Meanwhile the news of Theria’s departure was noised through the house. Melantho was excited, bewildered, frightened. She was closeted with Nikander. The slaves were weeping. One after another stole to Theria’s door, the men awkward in their grief, the women and girls throwing their arms about their little mistress in stress of tears.

Theria waited till nightfall before she asked Baltè.

“Just to go out into the lane a little while, Baltè—to stand near the stream.” Baltè sometimes had taken her there. But always of a morning when Baltè was doing her washing.

“Not in the evening, little mistress. You know your mother would not allow it.”

“She will not care this time. Oh, Baltè, you will have no more chances to please me!”

“But surely I am going to be with you in the Pythia House, little mistress?” cried Baltè, frightened.

“There, Baltè, don’t cry. Of course you will.”

But Baltè had already consented to her little mistress’s wish.

The two entered the lane at nightfall, climbed the short steep path beside the stream to the very wall of the cliff.

“But, Missy, I should think you would rather stay down near the highroad where you could glimpse the folk passing.”

“Not to-night, Baltè. It is only the air I want and to be still, very still.”

She slipped into a cleft of the hillside and drew Baltè with her. How quiet it was. A cricket chirped above her on the hillside, lonely in the stillness. At the opening of the lane the highroad was half hidden by the rocks.

“Missy, it’s growing late. We mustn’t stay too long.”

“Oh Baltè, wait—wait.”

Never in her life had Theria known fear such as this—the fear of the Argive’s not coming. It choked her. It tasted bitter in her mouth. But why should he come? Oh, why should he, to her who had been only cruel, who had thrown only contempt from her window—that window which now stared at her dimly at a distance like some vacant fate——

What was that? Oh, Paian, a stir in the bushes above her, a form in the dusk that walked swiftly and stopped under her window. Ah, dear gods, how intently he gazed up where he thought to find her!

She slipped from Baltè’s hand and sped like a freed bird toward him. Lightly she touched his arm. She could not speak.

He wheeled—saw her.

“Gods in Olympos! My lady!”

The Argive’s hope had been largely boasting. He had never imagined a thing like this that she should greet him in the lane. Now he saw her changed face. His voice broke with tenderness.

“Eleutheria,” he whispered. Her timid hand reached toward him.

Then the arms that she had dreamed of were about her, wonderful, amazing in their love. She had not known they would tremble. She had not known they would seem so strong. All thought for winning courage for her duty left her—all thought of asking anything. She only longed to give him the gentleness and affection she had so long denied him. She lifted her hand, touching his cheek. It was wet with tears.

“I have been unkind. Oh, I have been cruel to you.”

“Never cruel,” he said. “Only a child whom the gods must teach.”

“They have taught me. They have taught me,” she answered.

But now Baltè recovered from amazement, and was shaking Theria’s arm.

“Oh, Missy, Missy, come back with Baltè. Wicked child, you deceived me.”

“Yes, yes, Baltè,” she said, tender even toward her old nurse, “I will come. Eëtíon will not harm me. He is good, good.”

At this confession of faith the youth kissed her afresh.

But Baltè was not to be baulked. “Missy, please, please, for Apollo’s sake,” she cried, again shaking Theria. “How can you, you who are to be Pythia to-morrow?”

“Pythia,” repeated the lover. “What does she mean? Theria, that is not true!”

“Yes, I am to pray for a good oracle from the god. Oh, Eëtíon, I feel now that it may be granted me.”

“But you! Great Hermes, you cannot be Pythia. Your father will not allow that!”

“But Father commands it. He says it is the only hope of saving the Athenians. I must do it!”

“Theria, no, no!” he said wildly. The horror of the thing broke over him and the horror of her being torn from him, for ever beyond his reach. “What a frightful mistake. Nikander should know better. You are not fit for a Pythia. The tripod will kill you. It will destroy your mind. Theria, you must listen to me!”

She was listening indeed. His misery was sweeping down her high mission as the gale sweeps down the grain. She clung to him, saying no word.

“I can take you away from it. Oh, it is a horrible fate. My darling, for the god’s sake let me save you. I’ll take you to the islands. No one will find you; no one.” He was drawing her toward the hill.

That moment her spirit returned to her.

“No, no, Eëtíon. You cannot save me that way. Oh, you know you cannot!”

His hands dropped to his sides, his head drooped.

“Yes,” he faltered. “Not that way, but how, how? You must not be Pythia. You are not fit for pythiahood. I have seen the present Pythia—pale, weak, and above all, empty, ignorant. Oh, darling Theria, you cannot be made like that! I must save you!”

“You have saved me,” she said, childlike. “I was afraid and you have made me unafraid. Because you love me, just because you love me. Oh, Eëtíon. Death lies both ways. For the Persians will kill us if they get into Hellas. Only the god can keep them back. I must pray to the god. I must pray to the god. I know he will hear me. Must I not go when I know that? Oh, Eëtíon, help me—help me to go!”

He took her face between his hands, gazing into the brave depths of her eyes.

“Always you make me remember that you are Eleutheria,” he said in a low, awed voice. “If you were like other women I could not so love you—oh, do you believe how I love you—love you?”

Then before she could answer—

“Go,” he said hastily. “While I can let you go.”

She bowed her head and started down the lane. But he caught her back with passionate kisses. He knew it was the last time. There in the narrow lane pure love, neglected and chilled by Greek custom and unknown to Greek sullying passion, burned high and clear like an altar flame.

Baltè was beside herself with fear. Yet if she gave the alarm what a punishment there would be for her darling! Only the dread Cyprian could know when they would have parted had not a step echoed from the highway and Medon’s deaf-hollow voice called:

“Baltè, ye fool. If ye don’t come in I’ll lock the door on ye. What time is this to be stayin’ out in the night with the little mistress?”

And at this Baltè gathered her nurseling in her arms and almost carried her into the house.

CHAPTER XXI A PROCESSION OF SACRIFICE

Next morning it was Nikander himself who came to awaken his daughter. The house was full of the bustle and awe of the departure. The dawn was yet grey. Melantho brought a white festal robe and for one long hour she and Baltè dressed the young candidate, pinning the robe at the shoulders, clasping the girdle, drawing the soft fabric up through it, full over the breast, then adjusting the long straight folds to the sandalled feet.

Melantho brought the casket of jewels.

“Where are the pearls?” she complained. “You should have the pearls to-day.”

Theria put her deft fingers among the jewels, stirring their glitter.

“Please leave me without jewels, Mother,” she said quietly. Then she added, “Oh, Mother, let me give them to the god. Apollo loves gifts. He says if one gives one’s all it is as great as the bowl of Crœsos. These are my all. Perhaps they will help.”

So they crowned her with red roses and hung a great garland of roses about her neck. Baltè thought she had never seen any one so beautiful as her dark-eyed darling.

But Nikander, coming to look at her, was touched with anxiety.

“Daughter,” he questioned, “your hope is yet strong in you? Do you feel that you can reach the god?”

“Yes, Father, I was never so sure as to-day,” she answered him.

He took Baltè aside.

“What is it? Her eyes?” he asked anxiously. “It is almost a fatal look. Is she well?”

“Yes, Master,” said Baltè. “But Master must remember that she is leaving her home. That is awesome for a maid.”

“No doubt; yes, indeed,” he agreed.

He went to his own room and brought forth a cup of his most delicate wine.

“I want roses in your cheeks this morning, Theria,” he said as he gave it to her. But the roses came before she drank.

For as she took the cup she noted its picture—the same that was on the cup that she had broken—Athena bestowing upon a worshipper—the same delicate sureness of drawing—unmistakable!

“My dear, you are spilling the wine,” admonished Nikander, steadying her trembling hand.

Slowly she sipped it, bringing herself to speech.

“Father, give me this cup to take with me.”

“You strange child. It is a common thing from the pottery under the hill.”

“It will be from home,” she faltered.

Nikander went off for reassurance to his Wife. “Will she be homesick, think you?” he asked.

Left alone, Theria stole away to look at the places that she must see no more—her father’s room, the aula, the balcony. She had to walk slowly, stately, in her robe. Already she seemed far away from the free, swift-moving Theria she had been. Last of all she came to the dusky old storeroom. Here, strangely enough, it was not its recent memories that came to her, but the memory of that far-off day when she had wept there as a child and had seen the nymphs and baby Hermes in the stream.

Then suddenly the sharp scent of violets met her—sweet, dewy, fresh, new. With a low cry she gathered the flowers from the floor; then, stumbling over her long robe, she hurried from the room.

The Nikander family left the house in silent procession. They were all crowned with laurel and carried with them the necessary things of sacrifice—the flat baskets with grain of barley, the torch lighted from their own dear hearth. Lycophron led the victim, a white goat whose gilded horns were crowned with flowers.

It was a solemn going. Theria had never thought that she could walk toward her beloved Precinct with so heavy a heart. A breeze, rare in summer, caught her festal skirts and fluttered them about her. Across the sky raced splendid clouds whose huge silver bulks but made loftier the blue sky-spaces between them. Midsummer had laid its silence on the morning birds but doves on her cousin Clitè’s roof cooed and strutted in the sunshine.

And now they had reached the Precinct. How easily the great gates opened to her this time. Did the keeper remember that other morning, she wondered? When he had refused to let her in?

“Father, who are those splendid-looking men?” she asked. “They seem waiting for us.”

“They are waiting, indeed. They are the Athenians.”

Theria’s heart rose at the sight of them. At sight of their anxious faces her personal sorrow retired before their larger sorrow. She wanted to call out to them, to tell them how sure was her hope. But of course she could do no such thing. The Athenians greeted her father solemnly from a distance.

Now the priests gave into all their hands great boughs of trees.

“Do not speak again, Daughter,” said Nikander. “We are suppliants now.”

And bearing their solemn boughs with which to constrain the god and with their baskets, their torch, and their slow-moving victim, they went up the Sacred Way. The Athenians went with them. Kindly the little temples watched them go, kindly the gods and heroes beside the way.

Before the great altar in front of Apollo’s temple they stopped. The altar was alight, smoking in the sunshine. The flute player began a slow Dorian melody. The priest brought a great silver bowl of water and, lighting a new torch at the altar flame, plunged it hissing into the bowl. With the water thus sanctified, he sprinkled the worshippers. Then lifting the bowl high with the swift gesture of long custom, he dashed the water full upon the goat. It shivered in all its limbs!

Good omens, good omens all. Theria’s confidence soared upward with her simple faith.

When the goat was sacrificed, Theria was sure that its outgoing life was mounting invisibly to please the Son of Leto. In her enthusiasm, she kissed her hands to the god and stood so with her arms uplifted. Nikander, gazing upon her, felt more hopeful than for many weeks.

When the ritual was done, they laid the supplicant boughs upon the altar. Her brother and her mother kissed Theria good-bye, a sorrowful parting but quiet as befitted the temple place. Then Nikander took Theria’s hand and, Baltè following, led her around the back of the Great Temple to the Pythia House.

CHAPTER XXII IN THE PYTHIA HOUSE

The old house-mistress received them; a stubby little person, most proper and severe, who fixed her eyes upon Theria intently and disapprovingly. As she let them in, a curious suffering sound came from a farther room.

“It’s Aristonikè, the Pythia,” vouchsafed the mistress. “She has been like that ever since her last oracle—the one to the Athenians. She stands it worse and worse, poor child. It’s good we’re getting another to help her.”

Again she looked Theria up and down.

“Your slave woman can come with me,” she said, referring to Baltè. “Wait you for me there.”

She was one of those old servants whose trustiness and efficiency are so great as hardly to be borne by those who employ them.

Nikander and Theria were left in the little room, unknowing for how long. Beyond the corridor the poor little Pythoness kept up her incessant moaning.

It did not frighten Theria. From her stronghold of perfect health she could not think of herself as being thus laid low, but it filled Nikander with horror. He was glad when Theria began to speak.

“Father, the Athenians look so bitterly anxious. Is their task the hardest of all? Harder than that of the Spartans?”

“I think so, child.”

“But why?”

“Because they are not only doing their own task but keeping the Spartans to theirs. Then, too, Athens city itself is almost sure to be destroyed.”

“Father!”

Theria leaned forward in her usual absorbed fashion. Nikander suddenly realized how he would miss Theria’s questionings at home. Of late, he had actually cleared his plans by talking fully to Theria. This he did not acknowledge even to himself. Yet it affected his mood. He was tenderly frank in speech with her.

“Athens destroyed!” she repeated.

“It will all depend upon the battle in the north. The battle which we hope will bar the Persians out of Greece. We have decided now to hold them back at a place called Thermopylæ, the narrowest pass anywhere in our northern mountain barrier. The pass lies thus,” he gestured, “between steep mountain and sea. It is scarce six feet wide.”

“How far from here?” she queried.

“Seventy-five miles by mountain road. The Spartans, we hope, will march thither. The Athenians’ ships will hold the strait at Artemesium. Land and sea will fight at once.”

“But if we win,” exclaimed Theria, “then Athens will be safe!”

“Yes, if we win,” he repeated. “If we lose, the Persians will march direct upon Athens and upon us.”

“Oh, could the Athenians do nothing? Nothing?”

“Nothing to save their city, my child. Even Themistocles says that in that case the citizens must flee to the isle of Salamis.” Nikander was by this time lost in the subject uppermost in his heart. “But the Athenian fleet would fight. They are very confident of their fleet in Salamis Bay. They can tempt the Persians into the small bay where skill will count more than numbers. The crowding of the Persian ships might—— But, child, why do I tell you this? I have the habit of it because you never tell what is told you. But this is most seriously secret.”

“And you know I will keep it so,” she said with a little dignified uplift of her head which gave him a sudden pleasure and pride. Silence fell between them. They sat impatiently waiting, the courage of one of them oozing fast. They could hear again the moaning of the Pythia with now and then a miserable, delirious scream.

At last the old house mistress appeared.

“You are to come with me,” she said to Theria.

Nikander rose and took his daughter’s hand for good-bye. But as he kissed her a bitter tumult seized him. He hid his face in his cloak and hurried from the room.

CHAPTER XXIII THE CHILD PRIESTESS

Theria’s room was small, hardly more than a closet. Like all Greek bedrooms, it was windowless, but opened on a sunny court.

She was glad to be alone. The coming three days seemed hardly enough for her prayers and importunities to her god. The Athenian danger possessed her. She felt inspired and strong. She stood in the middle of the room lifting her hands. They almost touched the low ceiling.

“O Paian, dear Son of Leto. Am I not thy supplicant? A supplicant thou canst not refuse? Have I not given all my jewels, Apollon, Apollon? If I had more I would give all to thee.”

Here the old house mistress entered without prelude.

“You are to take off that gown,” she said, “and put on this, the simple garb of the Pythia.”

She held forth a sort of long shift. It was fine-fluted in the ancient fashion and yellow, the accepted colour of the Apollo priesthood.

“Send me my tiring woman,” said Theria.

“Your tiring woman is gone home. You will have the usual temple slave. The Pythia has no touch with outside folk.”

“Baltè is not outside folk. I will refrain from all speech with her, if that is the rule, nor will I allow her to speak.”

“That makes no difference,” said the old peasant woman, joying in her authority. “It is against the law.”

Theria’s heart bounded with anger.

“How dare you mistrust me, woman? Have I not the good of the oracle at heart more than you? Go at once and fetch me Baltè.”

The house mistress bowed and went out. And presently the Pythian slave appeared, very timid, and eyeing her, secretly amused.

Theria looked hard at her.

“Go out,” she commanded. “How dare you enter my room when I have not sent for you?”

The woman withdrew but Theria was conscious that she lingered in the court.

Never in all her life had any one dressed Theria but Baltè. It was quite unthinkable that any one else should do it. Theria was a spoiled child in this.

Awkwardly she unpinned her white robe herself, folded it away, and donned her Pythia habit.

But anger is the arch destroyer of prayer. Theria could not pray now. Besides, she was mortally hungry.

In her excitement last night she had eaten almost nothing. Now she must fast for three days to come.

She supposed, of course, that the hunger would grow worse and worse. She walked up and down the room when she should have remained still, saving her strength.

“What do I care for hunger?” she kept saying proudly. “For mere hunger when Athens is in danger of burning!”

But it was only by an effort that she could hold her mind on Athens. Her thoughts kept rising, floating away like clouds.

Eëtíon, where was he to-day? Somewhere in the Precinct? Was he thinking of her? Surely of naught else. Word after word of his came flashing back to her, snatching her breath with joy. Now his very touch, his trembling kindness filled her with a new and terrible longing. Only one dear hour of love in all her long life would she ever have to treasure and remember.

Suddenly with a wrench she brought her thoughts back to the present.

“Love of Leto, how the poor little Pythia moaned in her room across the court.”

It was impossible for Theria to be near suffering and not try to help.

She hurried across the court and entered the room. Aristonikè lay upon a couch, her eyes staring and bright. She was thin as a blade of grass, looked a mere child with her poor little cheekbones so prominent and white and her tiny chin so pointed. Theria came and stroked the pathetic face.

“Poor little Aristonikè, poor little girl,” she said.

The wandering eyes fixed themselves upon her.

“Who?” she whispered.

“I am Theria, daughter of Nikander. Where is your pain, dear child?”

“Not anywhere—all over.”

“Are you hungry?” asked Theria. This thought was so present with herself.

“Aach,” said the little creature, turning with disgust.

The slave who sat at the bedside answered for her.

“She will not eat these many days, Mistress; and she never sleeps, never, after an oracle.”

Theria gave a low-toned order to the slave, who presently brought hot milk. To Theria in her hunger it smelt like nectar itself. Aristonikè at sight of it hid her eyes.

“But if you will take it,” pleaded Theria, “I will send out your slave to buy a little living bird for you, a linnet in a cage.”

Aristonikè uncovered her eyes. “Will it sing?”

“Ah, how it will sing! high and low and chittery. But you must awake early in the morning for then it will sing best.”

As Theria talked she fed her the milk and Aristonikè sipped it before she knew.

They were still at this when the old dame Tuchè appeared.

“Mistress Theria here! What are you doing in this room?”

“You see what I am doing!” Theria answered.

“You are to keep your own room. I supposed you knew that.”

Theria rose in alarm.

“Have I broken the ritual? Oh, I hope I have not broken it.”

Aristonikè began to moan again.

“Do not go, oh, lady, do not go.”

She caught Theria’s dress, clinging to it as with little claws.

“I did not think the god would mind,” spoke Theria anxiously. “Is it not for his priestess to heal if she can?”

Old Tuchè’s armour was not without its flaw. She loved the little priestess child. She gazed at Aristonikè and her face curiously changed as if some sweet were trying to mitigate its sour.

“Well, mayhap ye can stay, Mistress Theria,” she grudgingly consented. “I don’t say it’s not irregular. But, well, it’s to-morrow an’ next day for your silence. Is the child eatin’?”

“When you stopped her she was eating,” Theria made answer.

So Theria stayed. Aristonikè gazed at her, and slow tears began to pour down sideways from eyes upon her pillow.

“What use is it to be better?” she said fatally. “Whenever I am better they come again and, oh, they put me in the smoke and then it begins.”

“What begins?” questioned Theria.

“Oh, the ecstasy of the tripod,” she whispered, frightened.

“But, Aristonikè, I am Pythia, too. Did you not know that? I am going to the tripod in your stead. Then you will grow well.”

Again the little claws caught at her, but in a sort of protection.

“No, no, not you!”

“Yes,” said Theria, nodding confidently. “I am strong. Me it will not hurt. Think not of the tripod, little one. There, there. You will not weep any more.”

And presently beyond hope, the tired little priestess, with her hands clasped in Theria’s strong ones, fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXIV THE HIGH, PERILOUS SEAT

When Theria awoke next morning she did not at first remember where she was. For the first time in her life she opened her eyes upon a room not her own. Then she noted over in the corner a woman dressed in the yellow robe of the temple. As Theria turned her awakened face the woman solemnly advanced, holding aloft two golden vessels. She offered one, a cup of water. Theria knew that this water was from the sacred spring Cassotis, which bubbled forth near the temple.

Apollo, himself, had troubled that spring. That was the reason it bubbled. His touch was upon it still. Theria drank in fear while the priestess murmured, “Apollon, Apollon.”

Would the ecstasy fall at once? It sometimes did fall upon the Pythia after this single draught.

Silence followed while the priestess searched Theria’s face. Theria paled, knowing well what she searched for. Then the priestess presented the second vessel, in which were leaves of laurel.

These Theria was required to chew. How bitter they tasted, intensely so in her hungry state. She rose from her couch, swayed as she stood. Without a word the priestess caught her and nodded her head in satisfaction. It was the beginning of what the priests wished for. How strangely Theria’s fingers tingled and, as she stepped, how heavy were her feet. She tried not to be terrified, but she was a healthy young thing. She dreaded the supernatural.

The old priestess dressed her.

“You must make sacrifice at the altar now,” she said.

She led Theria out of the house and into the glory of an amethystine morning. They came out upon the lofty temple platform and the whole Precinct lay below, little pillared temples bathing their feet in the low level rays of light, brazen statues, golden tripods flashing like struck cymbals in the dawn. The white Sacred Way was drawn clear as with the swift finger of the god up zig-zag through his own treasuries.

A trumpet sounded. It cut the pure air, a flashing shaft of sound; then echoed, echoed from cliff to cliff into utter clarity and sweetness—a note from Elysium.

Theria stretched forth her hands in enthusiasm of love. Every vestige of her dizziness disappeared.

“But this way is the altar,” corrected the dame, and led her to it.

Here Theria performed long rites, offerings of barley and wine, long silent prayers. Then she was led back into her room.

“Do not move from here,” said the priestess. “Be silent. Try to think of—nothing.” So she left her.

Never would Theria forget that day, the interminable hours, the slow change of the slant sunlight in the court, the trying to pray, succeeding at last with upsoaring faith, sleeping; the awakening to realize that it was still only morning. Then again the waiting, waiting.

The third and last morning Theria was so weak that she longed to cry, longed as she never supposed she could long for Baltè to come to her. Baltè surely could make her well.

To-day, as yesterday, she must preserve through all the hours the holy silence.

Again came the old priestess and dressed her. Then a procession of priestesses led Theria down to the Castalian spring where they gave her the sacred, purifying bath.

The shock of the cold water restored her. She realized with a start that now, if ever, she must seize the will of the god. She began to struggle with petitions. When she entered her room again it seemed to reel round and round her head. Surely this meant that Apollo was approaching nearer—nearer. The face of the god with solemn eyes and wide-flung hair became suddenly so vivid before her that she could not tell whether it was an image in her mind or the real presence of the god. Her home, her father, Eëtíon were all infinitely far away. Numbly she realized that she was passing into the ecstatic state.

Once again it was morning—the morning of the oracle. Theria’s mind awoke crystal clear, drenched through and through with hope. She smiled so happily at the old priestess when she came in that the dame bent and kissed her. Then, since this was against custom, the woman was quite shocked at what she had done.

Now the hour of the oracle was come. Dreamily Theria was conscious of being led into the temple. Knew that her hair was hanging loose, the sacred veil and crown upon her head. Ah, the dear, dear temple! There were the splendid golden eagles, the navel stone, first of Delphi’s treasures, Pindar’s chair which she had kissed. And over yonder the Athenian consultants waiting with awed faces. Oh, the god would help them. She was sure, now, sure!

Suddenly the priestesses kindled to exceeding brightness the eternal flame on the altar; put into it many branches of dry laurel. The cella was filled with smoke, especially the space behind the altar where within temporary screens the priestesses waved the half-extinguished laurel branches.

The priests pushed Theria into this enclosure. How sweet was the smell of the smoke. So smelled the little altar at home, the—— Oh, it was choking her!

She started forth from the screen. They pushed her back again. She began to struggle and to gasp—they held her—oh, fatal consequence! Their roughness made her angry. Weak as she was she fought them back. It was almost unknown that the Pythia should have such strength at this stage of the ritual.

At last they brought her forth, her eyes streaming, her nose also, her lungs burning as with fire. Down the rough-hewn steps they led her into the dim holy of holies. Bed rock was the floor and in its midst the narrow opening of a cave. Over the blackness of this abyss stood, solemn, tall, and terrible, the brazen tripod. From the blackness below would rise the breath of the god.

In awe-stricken silence the priests and Athenian consultants, again lifting on high their branches of supplication, filed into the small dank place. They filled it quite and ranged themselves with religious care.

Theria saw everything: the golden statue of Apollo, the special laurel tree in its tub; and there was her father looking as she had never seen him, his face set, white as chalk. She must not fail him—all the life of her dear Hellas hung upon her now.

Great Apollon! Akeretos, the priest-president, was lifting her up to the high seat of the tripod!

Now she must shake the laurel tree. For in the laurel was the life of the god. Yes, she was shaking it. The consultants stood waiting, waiting.

Suddenly she had a queer sort of panic. She had been expecting forgetfulness so intensely for so many hours. Now instead of forgetfulness everything became horribly clear—all memories, all thoughts, home, Eëtíon, nonsense rhymes which Baltè used to sing her. Great Paian! she must not laugh.... That would be sacrilege.

And oh, they were waiting, they were shifting their feet. The Athenians stole glances at each other. Their eyes were despair. How her father was gazing at her! Oh, if she could only pray! A moment more and they would take her down from the tripod.

She had failed!

Flashingly a temptation crossed Theria, a temptation as old as magic—as old as priestcraft or the first mumbling worship of primitive man.

She would make the oracle. Make it herself! Better that than for Athens to go unanswered.

The god! He might strike her with his arrows. Nay, he would instantly destroy her.... Better that than let Athens go unanswered!

She stiffened straight as a reed on her tripod and flung her hands on high, cupping the palms as if to receive a gift. Never had the Athenians seen anything more beautiful. Athena, their own virgin goddess, might in some divine appearing be of this likeness.

And her voice, the intense, meaningful voice of the singer:

Oh, how fatally clear she remembered all her father’s words. All that he had told her of the Athenian policy.

She was keen as a hawk. She saw her father start with horror. He was remembering his inadvertent talk with her. She must not be too exact, she must not let him suspect what she was doing. She began to mumble. Baltè’s nonsense rhymes would do while she was gathering thought. Her message must not be too hopeful. Now she had it!

She broke forth into hexameter verse. Once in a long while the Pythia did this and it was considered more exact. The priests could not remake it.

She began to sway, holding her hands still above her, repeating, “Salamis, thou the divine.” Then mumbling at nothing.

Surely now the god would strike her. This greatest of all sins upon her—— He must strike her.

She crouched, as if avoiding a blow.

Then she achieved her one Pythian act: She really fainted quite away.

CHAPTER XXV BITTER CONSEQUENCES

Day after day Nikander came to the Pythian House to inquire after his daughter.

“She has recovered,” they told him. “She eats once more; but there is upon her the apathy that follows the utterance.”

“What does she do?”

“Gazes for hours at nothing,” was the reply. “The usual thing. Though it is not usual that the apathy come so soon. She has gone but once to the tripod. Aristonikè now, not so strong a girl was she, but she went many a time under the ecstasy before this apathy attacked her.”

Nikander went home with heavy heart. He dared not tell Melantho his anxiety. Melantho’s way was to increase trouble by bewailing it. And Theria was but one of his deep anxieties.

His two sons these days seemed to have constant business in which they gave Nikander no part. This was natural for Lycophron. He was wild and loose-living. It would be a sorry day for him if he had to tell his father all his doings. But of late he and Dryas had become very intimate. From morning to night they were together. Even when in other company, Nikander saw glances pass between them. Lycophron was the worst possible example for a soft, gentle boy like Dryas. Yet Nikander did not like to break the brotherly tie. He still loved his eldest son.

Meanwhile, of course, Theria’s ailment was far different from what Nikander supposed.

It was no exhaustion of nerves from indulging in trance and supernatural sight. It was agony of mind.

Apollo had not killed her! This was her chief grievance. The mighty Immortal had allowed her to contemn his shrine, to deceive his questioners. Yet he did nothing—and continued to do nothing. What sort of a god was he?

And the Athenians had gone joyously home with their oracle. So the old temple dame had told her. They were treasuring it as the word of the god. They were acting upon it. The whole city was moved in effort to understand and fulfil the sacred words, Theria’s words!

She laughed hysterically.

She could talk to no one of what she had done. The oracle must remain to help the Athenians as best it could.

And what of all the oracles, age long, multitudinous, the pride and wonder of her childhood? Were they all like this—fraud and deception?

This thought beat down Theria’s spirit as with strokes of a sledgehammer.

“No—no—no,” she would say aloud.

Those oracles had helped the poor—they had punished the wrong-doer, they had founded colonies and controlled states. And surely Aristonikè had genuinely felt the god-possession. Had it not wrecked her, body and mind? But the doubt remained, tormenting all the golden preciousness of all the reverences of her life.

The Precinct, the beloved Precinct itself, where men brought grateful gifts to the god. What a mockery! Were these wistful worshippers all deceived? Did Apollo sit in Olympos and laugh at them?

And Theria was wretchedly lonely. Hour-long, hour-long, with nothing to do, not even spinning. The home faces, home voices, not a thousand paces distant, were all to her as far as the pillars of Heracles. Farther—farther! for it is conceivable that loved ones might return thence, but her dear ones could not come to her.

And while she sat mid the windowless walls there happened without her knowledge the most glorious single deed of Greece.

Sparta was ever grudging. She did not much care to bar the Persians out of all Greece. She would have preferred to meet them on the borders of her own Lakonia. If all her sister states should then perish why should Sparta care?

But one Spartan cared supremely to keep them out of Greece. Her king, Leonidas. So Leonidas, with the few soldiers which the Ephors grudgingly allowed him, marched for Thermopylæ.

Nikander, Lycophron, Dryas, Eëtíon—all the men of Delphi—saw one day the file of bronze-clad soldiers coming up the Delphi road, led by the twinkling flame of their sacred fire. They came with set faces under their helmets, their new polished shields glancing in the sun.

They paused only to do honour to Apollo, then moved onward up the Parnassian road. Three hundred men and a few timid allies to meet a million Persians at the narrow pass!

Those who saw them never forgot them. Nor has the world forgot.

But Theria within her walls knew nothing of these things. Theria had come upon a new dilemma.

The day of oracle came around again. Aristonikè was too ill for the tripod. Theria must serve again.

Of course she would not deceive again. Indeed she had no knowledge with which to deceive. Besides, she had determined that she would never again speak upon the tripod. She wanted to cry out against it, to tell the world what a mummery it was. Yet in spite of all this she was compelled to undergo the preparatory rites. She had to fast, chew the laurel, pass through the smoke. When she did not go into the trance, they tried her over and over again until she was well-nigh dead.

“I knew she could not do it,” she heard old Tuchè saying in the court. “What ’mazes me is that she went under the first time. She’s not the kind for a pythoness.”

Well, then, they would cast her aside, and for Theria they could not do so too soon. Then her life would be spent in the Pythia House. She thought of her lover and of the rich life that might have been hers, even of the “glorious children” that her father had spoken of. But now she would be but a useless vessel, cast aside. Theria had no joy in her helpful Athenian oracle. Her whole world was overshadowed because her god was gone.

One evening she was sitting in her room, “gazing into space” as Tuchè had described it, when the old slave who had tried to wait on her that first day brought her her supper. Now Theria had never received this woman. Tuchè had been obliged to send her a young girl whom finally, because Theria needed such service, she accepted. Now why did the old slave come again? Doubtless Tuchè had sent her merely as an annoyance. Tuchè disliked the new Pythoness.

“How dare you come here again?” Theria said to the old slave. “I will not see you; I——” She rose to her feet.

But the old slave, trembling much, set aside the supper tray and threw off her cloak.

“Baltè!” Theria cried, and with outstretched arms ran to Baltè’s bosom.

“Be quiet! There, there, my darlin’, don’t cry so, blessèd, blessèd—my little bird!” whispered Baltè, stroking the dark hair.

And Theria gradually brought herself into control, but her heart seemed breaking with joy.

“Baltè, Baltè, I never thought I could be so glad again. I never thought——”

“And just for seein’ old Baltè’s face,” said the slave proudly. “Here, eat your supper. Ye’re that thin and white.”

They talked in whispers, or rather in low, even tones, for Baltè well knew that whispers are most conspicuous of all sounds.

“How did you get to me, Baltè; how, in Apollo’s name?” Even the divine name seemed strange to Theria now.

“Been tryin’ ever since that old Chimera took me away from you. What’s she, to be takin’ care o’ my darling?”

“Yes—go on.”

“I couldn’t get in. The slaves were that pitickilar. Then I went to Lycophron and I begged him. I says, ‘Give me money to get to my darlin’. She’s dyin’ for the sight of a home face.’

“‘How do you know that?’ says he.

“‘You know yourself,’ I says. ‘Could she feel any other way?’

“Then his eyes grew soft like and he gave me not silver, but gold.

“‘Bribe ’em, Baltè, and get in,’ says he, laughin’. You know the way he does. ‘There’s no slave in the world but will take a bribe. When that’s gone come to me for more’.”

“Good, dear Lycophron,” said Theria, loving him tenderly.

She leaned closer. Already her face was changed by this touch of home. She asked lovingly after father and mother, even each slave of the household.

“Tell me, Baltè——” she said at last, then stopped. It was the first time she had ever spoken this name to any one.

“Did he ever come again—Eëtíon who met me in the lane?”

“Shame upon you. Do you think I’d be bringin’ you love messages, you, a priestess of Apollo?”

Theria hid her face, shivering.

“No—no. Oh, Baltè, I would not want messages. How can you think that of me? And I did not mean to ask.”

Poor child, only her own sense of right would uphold her now. She had no longer any fear of the god.

When Baltè rose to go Theria threw arms about her.

“You’ll come again. Promise that you’ll come again.”

“Surely will I. Oh, there, I’m most forgettin’ the message Lycophron sent you. ‘It’s an oracle,’ says he, laughin’. ‘I can give oracles as well as any one. You tell Theria: “Keep up heart. Argos has become Delphi for her sake.”’ It’s a queer message that.”

“‘Argos has become Delphi,’” she repeated, puzzled. “Argos, Argos. Could it be the Argive?”

Theria began to laugh softly, her eyes full of tears, clinging to Baltè and kissing her.

“Darling old Baltè,” she said. “Darling, dear old Baltè.”

“He said you’d like it,” said the old slave, nodding her head.

Oh, dangerous message. Lycophron did not look ahead. He meant to be kind.

CHAPTER XXVI “PRAY TO THE WINDS”

Next week happened what Theria most feared: An important oracle was required. Theria learned by chance that it was important. Old Tuchè in her excitement over it forgot how loudly she was speaking in the court.

“This time an oracle they must have,” she was asserting. “It is a matter of state. The new Pythoness can’t get it. I wonder what they’ll do with her, anyway.”

Theria was in despair. Should she refuse to try? Feign illness? Then a new pythia would sit upon the tripod to babble at nothing or to give some dread, discouraging word. Nikander had placed Theria in the Pythia House counting upon her prayerful help. Should she step down and leave him without that help, or was it her duty to go upon the tripod and feign again for Hellas’s sake?

But gods in Olympos! she did not know the question nor who was asking it. She could not deceive if she would. She would refuse to try.

Upon this decision Theria found relief for her troubled mind. No more should they starve her and push her through the smoke. She could rest. She no longer cared for anything but to be left alone.

That evening, like a light among shadows, came old Baltè again.

Theria’s first question concerned her father.

“Master is sad, very sad,” the old nurse told her, “but so is everyone sad. It’s like a storm gatherin’ on Parnassos—those Persians coming. And everybody is afraid like as when they hear thunder and the darkness comes closer. Oh, darlin’, if I could take you out of this house and keep you in the fastness of the mountain. There it will be safe. Only there.”

Again the danger brought to Theria its dark and solemn peace.

“Poor Baltè,” she said. “How could I live in the mountain with Delphi destroyed? Could I be a peasant all my days?”

“You could never be a peasant,” said old Baltè proudly, “and you would always have one slave. Old Baltè will last long.”

“Dear Baltè,” she answered, and kissed her. Baltè was a Helot from Sparta and some high Spartan blood ran in her veins.

But Baltè had more to tell.

“Yesterday came a runner. Poor lad, he was sore spent. Your father brought him in from the highroad and gave him wine and made the slaves rub him well. Then he sent him on his way to Sparta wi’ another runner to help in case he fall.”

“Whence came the runner?” asked Theria.

“From Leonidas at Thermopylæ. He was to beg the Spartans to come quick and help.”

“Those laggard Spartans,” cried Theria. “Why do they not go to help their king without his begging and summoning?”

“Leonidas is already fighting the Persians—he and his Spartans,” said Baltè proudly. “So few against so many. Only three hundred Spartans and a few allies. If the Persians beat they’ll be comin’ straight here—straight to Delphi.”

“But is there no one to help Leonidas—no one at all?”

“The Athenians be helpin’, so they say. The Athenians’ ships, Missy. But the Persian ships be twenty to one. Oh, dearie, if only a sea storm would fall upon the Persians. Medon keeps wishin’ for a storm. Medon was a sailor long ago and he knows the ways of ships. He says the Athenian ships would be safe in the Eubœan Strait where they are now. But the Persians be outside around some rocky points up there. A storm would wreck them sure.”

Theria suddenly awakened to the fact that her heart was overflowing with interest. Just as she used to do when she was pent up at home and could do nothing, would beat her hands together, agonized because she could do nothing. Now that some power was in those hands, would she abandon it? She trowed not! Oh, if she only knew the question before the Oracle!

But she could in no wise find this out. Then she must give her oracle as best she might not knowing the question—trusting that it must in some way concern the fate of Greece.

She would pray for that storm which was to help the Athenian ships. Baltè’s word showed her the way.

Theria might doubt the voice of her Golden God, she might almost doubt the existence of Apollo. But the things of Nature—the sea, the mountains, the winds—these she could see or feel. These to her were persons, clear-imaged, well known, and having much power. They were gods nearer to men in whom all men must believe. To these Theria still could pray.

When the day came she once more mounted the fateful tripod.

This, then, was the oracle which Eleutheria the Pythoness gave to Hellas:

That oracle is famous. Never in all the history of Delphi was an oracle received in such dire need. Never one which to the Delphians themselves was more precious. For it was the Delphians themselves who had asked the question and to whose hearts the oracle gave courage and hope.

They sent messengers at once, carrying the precious words of courage northward to the ships of Artemisium and to the little band of heroes at Thermopylæ, and eastward to Athens city, crying:

“Apollo, the Son of Leto, is on our side. He bids us pray to the Winds.”

CHAPTER XXVII THE MESSENGERS

Aristonikè was dying. No more did she notice even the linnet, Theria’s gift, which sang so sweetly in the solemn house.

A fever burned through all her limbs. As evening came on old Tuchè was fain to take her out of the close house and lay her in front of the door on the high temple platform.

And because the little maid would not go without Theria, Theria came also. So they two sat, Theria and Tuchè, on either side the couch.

Little do the young consider thoughts of the old. Theria did not guess that Tuchè hated her because Aristonikè loved. The little Pythia was Tuchè’s nurseling and Tuchè was cut to the heart to have her turn to another in her last hours.

But Theria, holding the hot little hand, had thoughts afar off. Her soul was in bitterness because she had again deceived her god. That was yesterday and she was yet weak from the ordeal. She wondered if Eëtíon would cease to love her if he knew what she had done. Certainly her father would not love her, nor would any of her kin.

Far below lay the sheer abyss of Pleistos valley. Nearer at hand Delphi itself nestled into the gigantic half circle at the mountains’ base. Precinct and town seemed floating in a violet mist. For the day was nearly done.

But this was the hour of the Phaidriades, the glory of the cliffs. Theria turned and looked above to where they stood facing the west. The setting sun poured his light direct upon these high embattling walls turning them to gold, to beryl, to amethyst. They gave forth light again as with a shout, a clashing of golden cymbals, and a prayer. They hushed the spirit of the gazing priestess.

As the reflected light retired upward with the sinking of the sun one spot on the cliff held the glitter. It was the famous votive chariot of Gelon, a chariot of polished bronze.

It stood on a high ledge of the cliff, its four bronze steeds prancing with that lightness of poise just learned by Greek craftsmen. In the car stood the naked chariot victor and just behind him the charioteer holding the reins, his living eyes watchful of his steeds.

But to Theria it seemed that he was driving them over the ledge, was driving them into the sheer abyss and that he did not care.

Would the gods so drive her Delphi to destruction? Would Atè (doomed Fate) tread Delphi down? Whose feet are delicate because she steps upon the heads of men, and on whom she steps she bows to the dust.

Ah, the Persians were so near! At Thermopylæ. Were they victorious? If so, they would march directly upon Delphi. They were not one week’s time away. The doom of Delphi pressed so close, so sure.

Even the temple guardsman seemed to feel it as he paced his beat. Now he walked slowly, dignified in his armour, now he hastened with nervous steps to and fro.

Aristonikè awoke, complaining. “The thirst, the thirst. Tuchè, bring water. Not warm water; cold, fresh from the spring.”

Tuchè rose up, flattered that her dear one had asked this of her, and went upon the errand.

No sooner had she disappeared than the guard halted short in his beat, looked about him—then almost ran toward the Pythia House.

He touched Theria’s shoulder and she rose with a cry. It seemed as though her thoughts had suddenly become visible, for there beneath the helmet was the face of Eëtíon. Pale white he was. Then flushed with unbidden joy as he touched her.

“Eleutheria,” he whispered. “I had to come. Your oracle to the Winds. The Delphians have sent it to Artemisium and the fleet and also to Athens. It is precious beyond words, for it will hearten men to victory. Nay, the winds themselves will answer it; for what god could resist so insistent a prayer.”

“Yes,” she whispered—wondering that he should come to tell her this.

“But your brothers! Oh, beloved, it is no happy tidings I bring you. Your brothers are in league with the Persians. They are with the Persian spies. They have gone after our Delphian messengers to kill them on the road.”

“Oh, Eëtíon, no, no!” she interrupted him in low voice. “Not my Lycophron! Not my Dryas!”

“Yes, it is true. I saw them start: Lycophron toward Thermopylæ and Dryas toward Athens. If it become known in Delphi it will mean the ruin of Nikander’s house. But your father will have to know in order to stop them. He would not believe me. But you he will believe because you are Pythia. Send for him at once, Theria, tell him to dispatch swift horsemen to save the oracle for Greece. I go now on instant business.”

He paused for a moment, gazing into her face. “Hera be thanked that I have seen thee. O thou peer of gods, thou sister of the dawn.”

He bent and kissed the edge of her sleeve. He dared no more. She was priestess of Apollo.

Then he was gone. Before she could answer or think of answer he was gone. He knew that to linger might likely be her death.

Theria’s thoughts whirled like a falling star.

She must send for her father. Yet her father could not have speech with her. Eëtíon did not know this, not being Delphian.

And even if Nikander could have speech, would Tuchè send for him? Tuchè refused regularly her every request. And Theria could not give reason for this request without betraying her brothers.

Meanwhile, Lycophron and Dryas were hastening to their doom and to the doom of Hellas. For Theria ardently believed now that the prayer to the winds would avail.

What could she do? Like a sword’s stroke came the thought: “Run home yourself, Theria. Now while Tuchè yet lingers in the house. There is no time to lose.”

Aristonikè was sleeping again. Theria snatched a dark himation which lay for cover on the couch and wrapping herself, head and all, ran to the protection of the temple-colonnade, along this she hurried, the columns would conceal her, soon an angle of the cella would intervene.

Then she reached the Sacred Way and walked not too fast so as to avoid question.

Her weakness from yesterday’s ordeal was instantly gone. She only prayed that Nikander might be at home, that his action might be swift. And now for the highroad; now for the familiar street; now for the dearest house which she had thought never to see again!

Medon tottered to his feet at sight of her. More natural would it have been to see the ghost of his little mistress than herself.

“Is Father within?” she asked, but did not stay for answer. She sped into the aula and, oh, thanks be to Kairos, Nikander was there.

He, too, looked upon her as upon a dire spirit. Only madness could have brought her. But more terrible than his wildest conjecture were her words.

“Father, Father, it is bitter news I bring. Lycophron, Dryas. They have Medized and are fled with Persian spies. They are gone to hold back the Oracle message from all the Hellenes.”

Nikander sprang up, seizing her wrist, searching her face.

“Child, what madness! They are not gone away.”

“Oh, are they in the house—now?” She almost sobbed with relief.

“I saw them both only an hour ago.”

“Oh, but within the hour they are gone far. Dryas to Athens, Lycophron to Thermopylæ. Father, search the house. Send after them quick, quick.” She seized both his shoulders, shaking them as if to waken him to the sorrow.

“Where did you get this information?” Nikander was pitiful of her strange mistake.

“I cannot tell you. It came, it came.” Her eyes looked so strange and glittering, her whole aspect so bordering on delirium or even ecstasy, that Nikander touched her gently.

“Was it by some prophetic power?—vision?”

Theria was so upwrought that she spoke out her first instinctive thought.

“No—no prophecy. Do not speak of prophecy. I am not deceiving. This is real, real.”

The words escaped the door of her lips. She was aghast at the net of lies closing about her. Of course if she should tell her father it was prophecy he would believe. But she would not lie to him, not even——

She did not know that as she thought these things guilt stood manifest in her face.

Nikander caught her arm, roughly, asking the thing he did not want to know—the thing he had been suspecting for many days.

“Theria, your Athenian oracle—Great Zeus in Olympos, have you deceived in all your oracles?”

She sank in a heap on the floor.

“Father, Father; the need! It was such bitter need—and no ecstasy would come. The Athenians—the—the——” Her weeping choked her speech.

Nikander was too horrified to answer. With hand before his eyes he kept repeating: “Great heaven! great heaven!” Suddenly he lifted his head again. “If the oracle is not from the god, why, in Zeus’s name, this pother about it—the words of a girl?”

“Father—but it is important. The Athenians will offer true sacrifice to the winds. They will be hopeful in their prayers, in their fighting. The oracle gladdens the fighters.”

But Nikander’s mind had never left his sons.

“Theria, who told you this vile tale about your brothers?” he asked.

“I cannot tell you. I——”

“If it were from some good source, you would tell me.”

Theria dragged herself up to her knees. “It was a good source. Oh, Father, the truest, the best, the kindest.” Poor Theria; even to speak of her lover set her white face aflame.

But Nikander was pushing further. “Theria, I begin to believe what the slaves have been telling in the household, that you have a lover. Now do not lie to me. Your lover brought you this news.”

Theria was utterly broken down. She could only moan, “But he told me the truth. He told me in order to save them. He told me because he loves my house and you and he wants to save us from ruin.”

“Great Paian, what a heap of sins on one girl’s head! She has deceived on the tripod, not once, but twice. She has a lover—she a priestess of Apollo. Now she has fled the Pythia House (which she ought never to have left) to bring a monstrous lie against her brothers.” To Nikander the shock of all this was terrible beyond belief. But worst of all, he feared that the vile tale about his sons was true. Oh, if he could crush that fear out of his mind. It must not be true. It could not——

He paced up and down the room beating his hands together weeping, sobbing, as only those can who, but once in a lifetime, give way to grief.

“My children all against me. But no, it cannot be true. Ruin for them, ruin for me. It cannot be. No!”

Theria crept weakly to her feet and followed him, but as she touched him he reeled from her.

“Don’t touch me!” he cried.

Suddenly his agony was transformed to anger.

“You—you—tell that tale, oh, how easily! It is not true. Leave me. I am beside myself. Your sins are more than I can bear. And now you add yet more. You will ruin my sons.”

“Father, Father,” she pleaded.

“My poor wicked Theria. What place is there for you anywhere? Not at home here, not in the Pythia House. Oh, I know not what to do for you. No, I will never believe that story. Leave me before I go mad!”

He was so beside himself that he did not notice when she shrank away from him and staggered out of the door. Indeed he continued to speak in the same words, “Leave me—I will not believe you. Leave me!”

Suddenly she touched his arm again, or so he thought. He uncovered his face to find Medon standing before him—Medon with eyes astream with tears.

“Master, Master, I knew that if the little mistress appeared it was some terrible thing. Master, I know what she has told you. You called so bitter loud upon your sons. I know, I know!”

“Leave me, Medon,” said Nikander angrily. He was still pacing up and down. But Medon did not leave.

“Master, I had not the courage to tell you. But I can follow the little mistress’s telling. Lycophron, Dryas, oh, you must haste to save them.”

Nikander stopped his pacing, and gazed into Medon’s face as though he comprehended not a word of what the old man was saying.

Medon piteously went on, “Lycophron and Dryas thought I could not hear, but I heard them talking; oh, I heard too well. And the men who have been with them, they are spies, Master. The slaves have long been whispering that those men were Persian spies. To-day I was very anxious. All day I have watched. And this afternoon I followed Lycophron to where he had swift horses waiting and those men were there. I do not know where they were going, but it was on some wicked errand. For when Master Lycophron saw me, he caught me. He threatened to kill me if I told. The men wanted to kill me at once. Oh, Master, haste! haste, there is no time to lose.”

“Yes—yes,” said Nikander, dazed into bitter quietness. “Yes, Medon, thank you.”

He stood quite still while his thoughts raced. Then he ran out of the house to summon youths of the nearest kin who owned the swiftest horses.

CHAPTER XXVIII AN OUTCAST ON PARNASSOS

Theria stood still in front of the house. She was stunned as one must be when life turns a sharp corner and shows undreamed-of paths of dread. “No place in the Pythia House, no place at home—anywhere.” Her father’s words were true. She did not feel sad nor terrified. She did not feel at all.

She looked down the twilit road toward Kirrha, the port. No, in Kirrha they would find her and kill her publicly. She must not die that way. The Pleistos glen also was out of the question. The hills! Her true hiding place was the hills. She turned swiftly into the little lane and threaded its shadows to the cliff. A steep climb brought her to a height above the house-roofs. Here at once she was in the wilds, on a slant hillside where grew laurel, wild olive, and the hemlock. Here the twilight was silvered by the rising moon, the same full round under which the Thermopylæ soldiers were keeping their heroic guard.

Here the laurels were threaded by a slender path, surely the one made by Eëtíon’s feet coming to her. She knelt down and kissed it. The Greeks were lovers of the earth and not seldom did they kiss it for their love. Oh, gods, if she could but hide herself completely! Then Eëtíon would never know her sins and would continue to love her.

She tried to make haste, but her whole body ached with weariness as though she were very old. The repeated fastings had told even on her strong body.

She won past the higher terraces of hill and found the so-called Kaka Skala, “bad stairs” indeed, steps partly hewn out of the rock and winding up Parnassos Mountain until they were lost in cloud. These she began to climb. No thought was hers to see the glory about her, the crags ghost-like in the moon, the abyss of glens black with fir and cedar, the heights which soared and melted into infinity, the starry sky—a grandeur hardly to be borne. Theria only knew that she was very lonely, that the grandeur was terrible. She seemed very small and childlike in that vastness, stumbling along ever slower, stopping sometimes with labouring breath, then pushing on again higher, higher.

In an upland meadow she passed a herd of cows, small wild things which fled trampling at her approach. She thought vaguely of the cattle of Apollo, which he kept on Parnassos and which of yore the baby Hermes had stolen. Of course, these could be no other cows. She shuddered at the supernatural creatures. Now she came to a fir wood, black like a cloak. The mottled moonlight sifted in at the edge pricking out fern-brake and rock, but within it was ebony. In such a place might the Bacchantes well go mad in worship of their god. With a sob she entered it. For the fear of being found was greater than her fear of the haunted place.

Theria lay down to rest among the mosses. Even her double terror could not contend against her utter exhaustion. At once she fell asleep.

She awoke in the dawn shivering with cold, hungry beyond telling. The fear with which she had gone to sleep, the fear of being found, met her at the door of waking. It made her get up and, though she ached in every bone, to push onward, upward into safer hiding. Sometimes she came to a bare stretch across which she stumbled in haste. For surely in such a place they would see her, and would catch her and drag her back and doubtless bury her alive. In this thought she forgot even her old grief for the loss of her god. Indeed she half believed that this present fate of hers was Apollo’s punishment which he had delayed so long.

Now again she must cross a bare upland. The sun was high and burning as it can burn only on such heights. She started across in the fearsome blinding glare, the sweat pouring from every member. Curiously enough, in the midst of the sunlight she saw moving along in front of her—a shaft of golden light! When she entered a shadow of jutting cliff the golden light endured in the shadow. If she paused, it paused. It was quiet as if a dream pervaded it. It seemed to smile as do those faces that peep from bushes or caves, which smile and afterward destroy.

Theria shrank back. It shrank with her. No evading it that way. A terror seized her. She wrung her hands. Should she run back to the forest? No, there it would only gain power. She tried to remember a charm against spirits which Baltè had taught her, but she had no memory left. Now a lofty cliff baulked her path. Against this cliff, facing her, the light stopped and stayed very tall and stately. It quivered, growing brighter to a focus, and suddenly out from it as from a sheath stepped a youth, tall as befits an Immortal and of beauty tender as the dawn. Golden were his tresses, golden his flowing vesture, golden his sandalled feet which did not touch the ground. But the quiver girt upon his shoulder was silver-white, silver also the bent bow in his hand.

Should she not know him, she who had known him so well? Up went her hands in worship; up higher yet her worshipping heart.

“Thou hast come to kill me,” she whispered. “Blessed art thou, glorious child of Leto. Not lightly shall thy dear Oracle be flouted and thy worshippers deceived.”

Apollo did not gaze upon Theria, else she would forthwith have died. But just above her he gazed, delicately smiling, and as he smiled, he toyed with his silver bow. Already was the shaft set on the string, and along that arrow back and forth ran the white fire which whensoever it reached the tip broke into flame. Now he nodded his head and spoke aloud:

Theria cowered before that voice, crouching to the earth.

But the god spoke on, almost tenderly, as to a frightened child:

Suddenly the god threw back his golden head and laughed. And with his laughter the cliffs echoed as with stricken lyres and heavenly flutings. He was laughing at Theria!

He spoke again:

Again he laughed—a merry, loving mockery.

Oh, the dear joyous god! the dear Son of Leto—Phœbus of the bright hair! Had he not always spoken at Delphi since his glorious mother bore him upon Delos? And Theria had doubted! Her heart filled with a very agony of faith and joy.

But now the god was looking again at his bow. Perhaps he had changed his mind, and would destroy her, after all. Even so, Theria had no regret to die.

But he spoke thus—

He turned, lifted his bow, and shot the flaming shaft toward the north. It flew with a peal like a lightning bolt when the bolt falls so nigh that it quenches the thunder; it soared white and blinding over the peak of Parnassos and fell crashing beyond.

But with the noise of the arrow Theria fell prone on the earth and knew nothing more.

CHAPTER XXIX EËTÍON PURSUES

Eëtíon had said to Theria that he was going upon an urgent quest. The quest was indeed an urgent one. Eëtíon set about it instinctively, not considering how little chance there was of its success. It was nothing less than to save Dryas.

Eëtíon had come to know Nikander’s sons well. He had met them in palæstra and lesche. Being foreign born himself, he had also often been thrown with the other young foreigners who were Lycophron’s friends. These men called themselves Athenians, but Eëtíon believed that they were really Ionians and that they were in Delphi for no good purpose. As for the men themselves, they were inclined to consort with Eëtíon as an Argive because of the secret league of Argos with Persia. And while they did not talk with him of their projects, they were less careful in his presence than they might otherwise have been.

Eëtíon, meanwhile, being ardent for the Hellenic cause, had kept quiet watch of the disguised Ionians and later of Nikander’s sons as well. He had hitherto found nothing worthy of note. But to-day a chance word of Dryas’s had given him a clue. Then by careful watching he had learned that couriers bearing the oracle were to be intercepted.

Dryas had a boyish devotion to Eëtíon, first because of Eëtíon’s beauty and also because of his prowess in wrestling and fast running, combined gifts which easily made a hero in Greece.

And Eëtíon, touched by the boy’s love for him, had wished many a day to save Dryas from his treacherous companions. This he had not dared to attempt because the weak boy would have babbled and all Eëtíon’s chance to watch the Ionians be lost.

But now Eëtíon thought he had a chance to save Dryas. Lycophron had gone to cut off the Thermopylæ messengers because he was heart and hand with Persia. Dryas had gone with those who were intercepting the message to Athens because of weakness and fear. Eëtíon, therefore, the instant he had given word to Theria, hastened to get a horse to pursue Dryas. Horses were few in Delphi where they were of so little use. He returned to the Great Temple where workmen painting the crimson columns had left their paint. Here he smeared a red gash upon his knee and stained the breast of his cloak. Like Odysseus, Eëtíon was a man of many devices. Then mounting, he hurried from Delphi along the Athens road. He trusted much to the swiftness of his horse. The spies must go at the pace of their worst steed, nor would they feel any special need of haste. So Eëtíon hoped to overtake them. The highway was very clear under the bright moon. It was a mountain road and mountain rough. But the Argives were lovers of horses and Eëtíon had not forgotten his early skill. Sometimes he held tight rein and rode with careful slowness; again, whenever the stretch was good, he dug heels into the flanks of his horse and galloped hard.

What man when at a gallop has not dreamed of his beloved? And Eëtíon had just seen Theria’s face again beyond all hope. So thin and changed it was, in its frailness almost like a child’s, and very pitiful. And oh, that little cry of joy when she saw him. That sounded again and again in his mind and mingled with the fragrance of the mountain road.

So he passed the town of Daulis. Some distance beyond Daulis he saw the men he was pursuing.

As soon as he neared them he began to cry out to them, cries of suffering and distress. He saw them stop. He dashed into their midst.

“For the sake of the gods, save me, save me!” he cried.

“What is it? What is it?” Ionians were always quick of sympathy.

“Robbers set upon me. I was going to Orchomenos on a mission. You fellows can guess what kind it was. But, oh, stop the blood. See, it trails in the road.”

At this Dryas dashed up.

“Eëtíon,” he exclaimed, going pale. “Great Zeus! Dear fellow.”

Eëtíon displayed his horrible red knee and leg and as he did so reeled in Dryas’s arms. “Help me,” he pleaded. “Don’t leave me.” Then Eëtíon lay in the road with closed eyes and heard them talking.

“We ought not to stop at all. You know that.”

“We’ve got to stop,” said Dryas’s voice, half weeping. “I for one will not let him lie here to die.”

“But we can’t leave you here, Dryas. We need you in Athens. Who will introduce us to Themistokles?”

“I won’t leave him, you’ve got to wait.”

Some of them drew aside, discussing the matter in low tones. Eëtíon strained his ear to hear. He heard a scornful laugh.

“Suppose we do leave Dryas here, will he join us in Athens? By the gods, he will! Wasn’t he beside himself to come?”

This was true. Poor Dryas was hoping to get ship from Athens and save himself in the Islands. He was terrified at the certain impending destruction of Delphi. He had ever pleaded to accompany the party.

“Very well, Dryas,” they said at last. “You stay. We’ll send you help. You can leave Eëtíon at Daulis. Then follow quickly. Do you hear?”

So they cantered away.

Dryas started off for water, but Eëtíon called him back again, allowing himself to revive.

“Get me on my horse,” he faltered. “I must get to Daulis if I can.”

“Dear Eëtíon, dear, dear fellow,” said the affectionate Dryas.

They remounted, and soon the distance was doubling between Theria’s brother and the killers of his soul.

At the edge of Daulis Eëtíon drove his horse close so as to touch Dryas’s arm.

“Dryas,” he said in a low voice, “do you want to do that vile deed?”

Dryas started violently, and Eëtíon caught his wrist. Eëtíon could throw Dryas at a wrestle like a child.

“What deed?” Dryas asked between chattering teeth.

“You know very well what deed. Will you let your father and your mother die without lifting your hand to help, while you save yourself—a renegade, a Persian serf?”

“Let me go, let me go!” cried Dryas wildly.

“Yes, I shall let you go, I will not bring you back against your will. That would be folly. But think. Perhaps your father already knows this. If so, he longs to die. Think of the shame, Dryas.”

Dryas began to breathe as if weeping.

“Think of the glory of fighting for Delphi,” went on Eëtíon’s low voice. “The rich glory. And if you will fight I will make you my brother-at-arms. Yes, even knowing what I know. You are a skilful fighter, Dryas. You will not fail in the fight.”

Suddenly the sobbing breaths stopped and Dryas sat up straight and urged his horse forward. “Quick, quick,” he said, “before they come back after me.” Then he reined in the gallop. “Eëtíon, forgive me. Your wound!” he said.

“My wound is red paint,” said Eëtíon, laughing. “Thus I was wounded for your sake.”

“And, and you came out for my sake——” At this Dryas began to weep indeed.

They passed Daulis, and hurried on under the setting moon. Dryas was silent now, only urging his horse so fast that Eëtíon had to check him for fear of accident. In the dark they met a party of men hurrying toward Athens as if mad. Eëtíon knew what they were and Dryas guessed, and he hid his face in his cloak as they rushed by. They were Nikander’s kinsmen riding to intercept those who would withhold the good oracle from Athens.

Toward dawn the two riders neared Delphi, and at the familiar road-sights Dryas lifted his face, saying to himself:

“Safe, safe!”

“Safe?” asked Eëtíon, “where the Persians will certainly come to harry and destroy?”

“Yes, safe,” answered Dryas, “safe from worse than the Persians!” and with Greek affection he reached for Eëtíon’s hand and kissed it.

CHAPTER XXX SHEPHERD WISDOM

Nikander had returned to his aula and sat there with face of stone. The kinsmen had gone. He himself had sent the doom upon his sons. For him Delphi was already in the dust. The Persians had no need to destroy her.

Suddenly a running step outside, and the door burst open. There in a flood of morning light came Dryas like Hermes running with outstretched arms. He fell at his father’s feet, embracing his waist, hiding his face in his lap.

“Father! Father! Father!” he cried.

Nikander fell forward at the shock of joy, trembling and unable to speak. Then he righted himself, heard as in a dream the boy in his arms talking to him.

“Only some god saved me! I want to fight for you, Father—to fight at your side.”

“You did not go with the spies? Not after all?” Nikander said dazedly.

“Yes, Father, but——”

Here Eëtíon, whom both had forgotten, stepped forward and touched Dryas’s shoulder.

“They abducted him, Nikander,” he said clearly. “It was only by a ruse that I saved him. Oh, if you could have seen the joy in the boy’s face when I got him free.”

“I see the joy in his face now,” said Nikander. Nikander believed because he so wanted to believe.

“Tell your father how I fooled them,” urged Eëtíon, and Dryas between trembling and laughter told the story of Eëtíon’s red paint wound. But before he had finished, Nikander rose, took Eëtíon’s hand, and drew him to an embrace.

“Oh, you good youth!” he said, “I can never thank you, never fully thank you. No kinsman shall be so dear as you.”

Now the only shadow on Nikander’s joy was his anxiety for Lycophron. Dear gods, where might his son be now? Even if Delphi survived the onslaught of the Persians this sorrow would remain. Nikander could never speak his son Lycophron’s name.

A slave brought their breakfast, and as they ate the figs and bread and milk they began to talk seriously of Delphi’s plans of escape. Many citizens had already carried their household treasures up the mountain to the Korykian cave. And the priests were now urging a further questioning of the god if perchance even yet he might reveal to them some way to save the Holy Place. Dryas entered into the plans with an interest and fearlessness which caused his father to look at him ever and again. What had happened to Dryas? What brave-minded god was thus changing his son?

Such was their conversation when a temple slave came running in at the door past Medon, saying breathlessly:

“The Pythoness, your daughter, is nowhere in the Pythia House. Is she here, Nikander?”

Nikander hid his eyes confusedly a moment.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, she is here; I had forgotten. I will bring her back myself and explain. Tell that to Tuchè. Dryas, dear lad, go you and fetch your sister.”

The slave added with embarrassment: “And, Master, I was to tell you that Tuchè is very angry. They wish to begin the rites at once. Consultants are waiting and the priests are there. Aristonikè is too ill to go upon the tripod and they have no Pythia.”

“Oh, unkind gods,” breathed Nikander. His heart had ached every time his daughter was set upon the terrible high seat of the god. Now how much more would it ache knowing how she had deceived. She must not go there again. Must never again give an oracle. She was no fit subject for the ecstasy. He must find some chance to tell her this. Must command her to resist the trance no matter what rites were practised. But oh, what a terrible fate for the poor child. Back to the Pythia House. Of course she must go back.

He started to meet her before she could come downstairs.

But here Dryas returned with amazed face, and Melantho with him, running down into the forbidden aula because of her anxiety.

“How could you think Theria was in the house?” asked Dryas.

“She has not been here. She is nowhere here,” urged Melantho.

Again Nikander paused, confused. What had he said to the child? What harsh words? He had not meant them. Of course he had not meant them. But surely she had not gone forth from the house.

Melantho was bringing in old Medon who knew all who came and went.

“What is it? What?” asked the poor deaf man. “Yes, little mistress was here, but she went away—back to the Pythia House. Yesterday evening early. Very sad she looked, and staggered as she went.”

So at last they knew that Theria was abroad.

Nikander’s face hardened with bitter anxiety.

“Come, Dryas,” he said. “We must find her at once.”

Dryas turned to Eëtíon, “Dearest Eëtíon, you will help us?”

As for Eëtíon, through what a range of feeling had he been carried in these moments? First, joy like an unbidden melody, because his beloved was in the house; then strong joy because he might see her as she passed; then horror at her disappearance. Why had she gone? What had Nikander done to her to make her run away? What cruel thing had he said? But there was no time even to be angry. Theria must be found and that quickly before the Persians should arrive. Eëtíon looked at Nikander, begging for a boon.

“If I might help to find her,” he ventured; “but let me go my own way while you go another. We must search everywhere at once.”

Nikander read his unspoken fear. Women must not be abroad when the Persians were in the country. There was not an instant to lose.

“Nikander, I am presumptuous to give advice,” said Eëtíon. “But send also messengers to the port. I beg you do that.”

It seemed to Nikander that he was sending messengers to the four quarters of the earth for his vanished children. He answered hurriedly:

“Dear Eëtíon, you are wise, I can hardly think out this thing.” He was too occupied to notice Eëtíon’s emotion.

Dryas had meantime fetched a fresh chiton for his friend. “You cannot go forth in that stained cloak,” he told him. “Dear Eëtíon, how excited you are, how like a kinsman you care for us. We’ll find her in a half hour. She ran away once before, you know. I know exactly where she’s run to.”

Eëtíon was so angry that he dared not answer Dryas. How little the shallow fellow knew of his sister’s character and ways. Eëtíon was glad when they all left the house.

How foolish they were, running hither and yon without thought. In Eëtíon’s Argos were many shepherds and when a sheep was lost they did not go forth in this wise, but first thought about the paths, and the simple sheep reasoning, and then went and found.

This flight of Theria’s was of course connected with the message which Eëtíon had himself given to her. She had not sent for her father, but, true heart that she was, she had brought the news herself. But why had she fled forth like this?

He took Medon into the street.

“Tell me, Medon, was Nikander angry with his daughter?”

“Oh, Master, how should I know?” But Eëtíon saw at once that Medon did know and did not rest until he got the truth of him.

Then he went back into the house and called Baltè.

“Baltè,” he said, “take with you two men slaves and go up on Parnassos by the far eastern path and look for your mistress.”

“But, Master, surely she would not go there. Wolves are there.”

“She would not stop for wolves,” Said Eëtíon sharply, and Baltè saw his eyes fill with tears.

“If you reach to the Korykian cave, Baltè, and yet do not find her, then come down by the hither path and I will meet you at the top of the Bad Steps. Give me a flask of wine and my sword there.”

Then Eëtíon fairly ran out and through the lane up the slender path he knew so well.

On the hard rocky earth he could find no trace of her. But still he climbed on, his heart aching for the dear lonely child who had fled from unkindness and injustice.

Oh, how could Nikander have let forth upon her gentle head the wrath that should have gone to his sons? Where was his fatherly tenderness? How could he in the first place have put her away in the Pythia House, that cruelty, that fearfulness, tales of which were rife in the Precinct? How could Nikander have placed her there to be a barren maid, she who was so full of life, so fit to be the mother of children? As Eëtíon mounted his anger mounted with him. He longed intensely to take her away from cruelty and neglect and to give her henceforth only tenderness and the visionary love that was his.

He climbed up the Kaka Skala, passed the wood in which Theria had hidden over night, on up into the pathless heights beyond her, into despair of finding her alive. A mountain bear padded past him and broke its way into the thicket to hide. “Oh, Artemis, Protector of maidens; help the little maid who is now in thy care alone!”

By some instinct, for Eëtíon could now no longer reason, he turned back. He descended to the Kaka Skala, he entered the wood, and there on a jagged branch found some torn yellow shreds of dress.

Then as in fever he ran hither and yon searching; found, now a broken twig, now a footprint. He began to call, “Theria! Theria!” He lost time here for he was so sure she would stay hiding in the wood. But at the last some god led him out upon the upland where he caught a glimpse of a fluttering yellow garment on the ground. He ran to it and at last saw her, slender and prone, her hair lying in soft dark billows upon the rock and hiding her face.

With a sob he knelt, lifted her in his arms and tenderly put back her locks. Then he saw her death-whiteness and the terrible gash upon her forehead where she had hit the rock in her fall. He was too wild at first to help her, kissing her, calling her, feeling her cold hands, holding his lips against hers to make sure if any breath was there.

But when she responded not at all Eëtíon grew more careful. He brought out the wine but could not give it between the set lips.

Then he gathered her in his arms to carry her up to a spring which he remembered in the heights. He was too frightened now to feel any emotion. He only knew that he was carrying Theria away from Delphi, away from the bitterness and mishandling. It was right that he should do so. She belonged to him, to nobody else in all the world! Away in some colony over seas they could be truly wedded and live the years. He even forgot her Apolline priesthood and the sacrilege of loving such a one.

Meanwhile, perhaps she was dying in his arms.

In the upper slope among the firs he found his spring. He laid the dear burden on the ground, bathed her white face, bathed the wound and poured the wine into it. At last life, like a visible prayer, came back into her face and the colour of life was there.

Then indeed did Eros, the tall youth, earliest of all the gods, send power into Eëtíon’s heart, filling it with a strange uplifting worship—that invisible power with which the son of Chaos holds the cosmos together, Eros the mighty one.

Now Theria opened her eyes. They were like black lakes and lonely as the stars.

“Theria, darling, darling Theria. No harm shall come to you now, Theria!”

But she looked straight into his face without a spark of recognition.

“It is I—Eëtíon,” he said, taking her face between his hands. “Kiss me, my maiden!”

“Apollon,” she murmured. “Apollon.” She did not close her eyes again, but kept them fixed upon Eëtíon’s face in a way that froze his spirit. Eëtíon was not skilled in Apollo’s ways; he knew nothing of mantic power by which men with their natural eyes see things unseen. He could only recognize that Theria’s spirit was farther from his than the farthest planet.

“Apollon,” she said again.

She was in that far serenity that knows not time nor change, the indifference that comes of too great knowledge from the gods.

Of a certainty she was going to die, and that very soon.

Eëtíon sprang to his feet. Fool, fool, that he was to bring his darling where she could get no help from leech or magic. If she died here it would be he who had killed her. The fear of Apollo now came over him. Apollo would blast them both if he took her away for his own. Again he lifted Theria in his arms and carried her back toward the path where he hoped Baltè might meet him.

Baltè did not appear at the head of the Kaka Skala, but presently came Delphic citizens bearing their household treasures to hide in the hills. These, seeing the dying maiden, helped him gladly.

“Did the Persians hurt her? Are they already come?” they asked, terrified.

“No,” said Eëtíon. “The maid was lost and fell upon a rock.”

They gave their litter on which they had carried their burdens and upon this Eëtíon and a slave of the Delphians bore her down toward her old bitter fate again, toward the priesthood and the torture. If she should live at all, she would not live long in that Pythia House. Eëtíon’s heart was dead within him as he made the slow descent.

CHAPTER XXXI NIKANDER’S NEAREST OF KIN

Meanwhile, Nikander and Dryas of the easy confidence came to the temple of Athena Forethought where this time no Theria was to be found. Dryas looked into his father’s grieving face.

“Theria ought to be ashamed of herself,” he said stoutly, “to give you such trouble now.”

“Be silent, Dryas,” said his father sternly. “You know nothing about your sister or her reason for this. Try to find her. Try.”

“Father, I am sorry,” said the wondering Dryas, taking his father’s hand.

“I want you to search now in the slave quarter,” said Nikander hurriedly. “I will go to the Precinct whence I will send messengers to Daulis.”

Wearily Nikander climbed the Precinct hill. His memory was playing him curious tricks. His harsh words, which at first he could in no wise recall, now came back deadly clear, “No place in the Pythia House. No place for you at the home hearth, Bringer of vile tales.” Great Zeus! he had been god maddened, blind! The girl had risked her life and reputation to save her brothers from disgrace.

Theria was always doing the unexpected, poor child, always bringing down wrath upon her own head, and as he now saw it, doing something either interesting or noble. What a Nikander she was, how true in every instinct to her ancient race.

While these thoughts beset him Nikander was hastening from treasury to treasury, hastening through the hidden paths and secret places of the Precinct. Each familiar statue, tripod, each quiet, chapel-like treasury room pierced him with the thought of her intense love of everything in Delphi. Her very deceptions on the tripod had been only from her too great love for Delphi and for Greece.

And her lover; poor little daughter, if he had but kept closer to her in daily life (ah, she had tried so wistfully to keep close to him), she would have told him of this lover long ago.

Why had he not warned his child when he was making her a priestess? He had put her on the perilous seat of the tripod without one thought of her. He had left her aidless and lonely. He was to blame, to blame!

Near the Great Temple Dryas met him again, saying that his search had been fruitless—asking where now to go. Nikander caught his son’s hand convulsively.

“Go nowhere,” he pleaded. “Stay with me.”

But even as he clung to his boy he thought how impossible it would be for Theria to do what Dryas had done. No spies could have dragged her away on such an errand. And oh, dear Paian, she would not have companioned with them at all nor left her father lonely through these terrible days. She would have entered with him into every struggle for Delphi’s honor if her father had only allowed her. How wistful she was when she met him returning from Council. What a sly little puss in her questioning, finding out his problems which he did not mean to tell! Nikander smiled, but in his smiling found himself blinded with tears.

Dryas was sure that it was anxiety for Lycophron which unmanned his father thus.

Long after nightfall the two came home again. The slaves brought supper, and all unwilling they sat down to eat. Then footsteps were heard in the doorway—Eëtíon and the slave with Theria white on her litter.

Nikander ran to her, lifting her in his arms as though she were a child, calling her endearing names, weeping with relief. He laid her on a couch in the aula while they brought the torches.

But one look at Theria’s face and wide-open eyes sobered him.

“Theria, Theria,” he called to her terrible silence.

“Oh, Nikander, don’t you see that she is dying?” cried Eëtíon, brokenhearted.

Nikander rose solemnly to his feet. “She has beheld a god,” he said. “She is yet in the vision.” He turned to Eëtíon. “Has she spoken any word?”

“She called upon Apollo thrice, but since then this silence. Oh, Nikander, what does it mean?”

Nikander bowed his head. Knowing what he knew of Theria’s sacrilege, he fully believed this state to be a doom from Phœbus himself. He believed that she would die. And when he lifted his head, trying to speak, Eëtíon’s anger melted before the anguish in his face.

Nikander as a worshipper of Apollo had recognized at once the mantic ecstasy. He knew also the accepted means of breaking the ecstatic state. He had Baltè bathe Theria in warm water and gently rub her body. He himself brought his lyre and sitting at the bedside played strong, clear music in the Doric mode.

Then fearing that he might have omitted some act, he went out and fetched in the priests to look at her. They gazed, awestruck. “Yes, you are doing all you can,” they said. “The maid is certainly in a vision. But she is far gone toward Hades.”

So Nikander resumed his post. Sitting there, patiently playing, he was the more convinced that she would die. Even his anxiety for Lycophron faded before this unlooked-for sorrow. Nikander’s two sons were only by some physical chance his children. This girl was the child of his mind and heart. She loved what he loved, hated what he hated. She was his nearest of kin. His own! Why had he not known it before?

At last, as Theria’s wide-open eyes half closed, he tried to believe she slept. So he lay down on a couch near at hand while the old slave Baltè watched.

It was full morning when Baltè woke him.

“Karamanor and Agis are in the andron to speak with you.”

These were the young kinsmen whom Nikander had sent in pursuit of Lycophron. Nikander rose and went to hear what he must hear.

The two young men waited solemnly.

“It was midnight, Nikander, when we came up with the spies on the north road,” said young Karamanor gently. “They gave battle so quick that we had just time to fend ourselves even though we so outnumbered them. And Lycophron, even though we called and kept calling to him to come over to our side, that we had only come to save him, Lycophron laughed us to scorn. And, oh, Nikander, he fought splendidly, fiercely, like a wild boar. And so he fell. Two of the spies fell. The rest fled to the hills.”

“He was fearless always,” said Nikander in a low voice.

The young man put his arm pityingly over his uncle’s shoulder. He could not know that just now Nikander felt only relief in the death of his son.

“We took an oath among us, we kinsmen,” said Karamanor. “All of us, an oath not to tell this thing. We will say that he fell in a skirmish with the Persians. Men are too troubled now to think. His absence will not be marked. Our words will be believed, if any of us, after the Persian onslaught, be left alive for beliefs or doubtings. Can we do anything further for you, Nikander?”

“No,” said Nikander quietly. “May the Son of Leto bless you for saving my son’s honour. I must go now and tell his mother.”

Dryas, who had been playing the lyre at Theria’s bedside, had stopped playing when his father withdrew. He sat awestruck, waiting.

Presently Melantho’s death-wail for Lycophron sounded through the house.

“Oh, look, Baltè,” whispered Dryas, through his tears. “Poor Theria does not even hear it.”

Baltè bent over her nurseling. “She hears it well enough,” she answered sadly. “She hears, but she is too far to care.”

CHAPTER XXXII TERRIBLE NEWS FROM THERMOPYLÆ

Theria lay on her couch without change, except to grow weaker each day. Baltè had her own remedies. She brought a sieve and suspended it from the ceiling. Then she whirled it, reciting all the magic she knew and all the cures. At whatever cure the sieve came to rest that one she tried. But, alas, it did no good.

Nikander, in spite of urgent business with the priests, spent hour upon hour beside his daughter. Sometimes he himself wondered at his strength of love for a mere girl. He sat dreaming over her, learning her with a new intimate vision which led him farther every hour.

Often and again as he looked across to where Melantho sat he would say:

“Wife, we have not understood this little one of ours, and now it is too late.”

And Melantho would come around the couch and timidly kiss her husband’s forehead.

Nikander, after his first keen gratitude to Eëtíon, was too beaten about by the winds of fate to think of him. Eëtíon, however, came every day. He was very shy, very guarded in his inquiries after the Delphic priestess. His friendship for Dryas and Dryas’s devotion to him were ample excuse for his coming.

Then on the fourth day of Theria’s illness Delphi rocked with news as at times it rocked with actual earthquakes. The heralds from the north came running, crying the news with spent voices:

“Thermopylæ is taken! Thermopylæ is taken by the Persians!”

Then after they took breath again from their long run—

“The Spartans are beaten back. The noble three hundred are killed every man. Leonidas is killed. All, all is lost. The Persians stole through over the mountain and attacked us from the rear. Thus they took the pass. They are free in Hellas now to do their will upon you. Yes, they are marching hither. They are already in the land of Daulis. They are not forty miles away.”

The trembling Delphians were mute with horror.

“But the fleet,” pursued Nikander, “was the fleet also destroyed?”

Upon this the heralds had better news to tell.

“Oh, the fleet, wonderful! The gods themselves! Never was known such a storm. Three days it lasted, oh, Delphians. Rain, torrents of rain, now in midsummer when we never have rain. Wind! Oh, such wind that it strewed the Persian ships in heaps along the shore—windrows of ships and drowned Persians. But our ships, the Athenians were safe in the Eubœan strait. Not one was lost in the storm and very few by battle. Well said your Oracle: ‘Pray to the winds.’”

Nikander, his heart swelling with joy and pride, began to see dimly that miracles can happen in spite of sacrilege and in other than accepted ways.

“The Athenians?” he asked. “Are they hopeful?”

“Oh, hopeful! Heartened by the god’s help and the storm’s help. Of course the Persian and Ionian ships still outnumber them. But the Athenians say that some god is on their side. They are ready to fight again. They are hastening back to Athenian waters for the fighting.”

But Delphi had no such hope. Delphi was all confusion. She had no real army even though she was an independent state. She had only her temple guard. This guard had been sufficient in ordinary times. For all Hellas revered Apollo’s temple. No Hellenic state would dare plunder Apollo’s shrine. But now! Those hordes of barbarians who knew not the god. From these the Delphians well knew what to expect.

They hurriedly left the heralds. Everywhere now were seen men with their families, their slaves, carrying burdens, some hurrying up toward the mountain, some hurrying down toward the port of Kirrha. But the braver citizens stayed with white faces to consult the Oracle once more.

Nikander, hastening homeward, found these and the priests already at his door.

“You must give us back the Pythia, Nikander,” spoke Kobon angrily. “The Oracle must be consulted at once. Who ever heard of a Pythia being taken home again?”

Nikander pushed through the crowd and stood with his back to the closed door.

“You may not take her,” he said. “She is dying. She would die before she reached the tripod.”

“She might not. You know very well, Nikander, that on the edge of death the Pythia often prophesies best.”

Timon took Nikander’s arm.

“I am sorry, cousin,” he said, “but you know that what Kobon says is true. This is no time for a man to think of his own household. She might save the very shrine.”

“She cannot save it,” said Nikander stubbornly. “She has not spoken for four days. She is beyond all speech. Aristonikè is not so ill as she.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to decide what he might and might not tell. “My daughter has no gift of ecstasy,” he ventured. “No oracles come to her at all.”

“Nikander, what lies! You know the very best of the oracles have been through her.”

“Aristonikè,” broke in another priest; “Aristonikè prophesies nothing but ill.”

They seized Nikander, held him struggling, while priests and citizens broke upon the door and rushed into the house.

“Dryas, Dryas, help me!” Nikander shouted; but if Dryas was there he did not appear.

Nikander heard Baltè shriek as the priests caught up her nurseling. Forth they rushed again, his daughter white as death in a stalwart priest’s arms. So they hurried up the road toward the temple.

Then Nikander from his house saw temple slaves running to meet the priests, saw them all stop together. They crowded in confusion. Then from the confusion came the same temple slaves and to Nikander’s amazement they were bearing Theria in their arms, bringing her home again. The priests and citizens ran onward frantically up to the temple.

Nikander wrested himself free and ran to meet the slaves. They gave her carefully into his arms.

“She is dead, already dead?” he whispered.

“No—no, Master,” they assured him.

He did not pause to find out what had happened but hurried back with Theria to her couch, where on a sudden he could do nothing but weep and wring his hands. Baltè had to compose both her patient and him, assuring him over and over again that no harm had been done.

It was Dryas who, later, hurrying home from the Precinct, told Nikander what had happened.

“Aristonikè,” he announced, “passed into ecstasy suddenly without any rites and prophesied wonderful things. They carried her to the tripod even while she prophesied. The crowd of priests coming from our house reached the adytum just in time to hear her cry out:

“Then she fell forward into old Akeretos’s arms and was dead.”

Nikander shuddered. “Poor child,” he said, “poor, poor little girl.”

“But, Father, think what that means!” said Dryas. “‘The god will care for his own’!”

Nikander put his hand on Dryas’s shoulder.

“Yes, yes, my son, you are right, but had any one asked a question? How did it happen?”

“But, Father, don’t you know that Akeretos himself has been asking a question for days? He is so old, I suppose he knows the Oracle better than any of us. He says that in his youth this method was tried and answer received beyond all hope.

“But what did he do?” asked the dazed Nikander.

“He made sacrifice right in front of the Pythia House, not as usual on the Great Altar. The question which he was to ask was: ‘What shall we do to save the treasures of the god? Shall we hide them in the hills?’ But he repeated not this question at all, but instead, the while he was sacrificing, he kept repeating to himself the answer which he desired—thinking only of this answer: ‘The god will care for his own. The sacred things must not be touched by mortal hands. The god will care for his own.’ And sure enough within the house, locked within it indeed, Aristonikè awoke from sleep with a low cry and began to say those very words:

“So when Tuchè came running out to tell him, Akeretos brought Aristonikè forth to the tripod.”

Dryas paused, taking a long breath.

“And now all the Delphians say there is no need to stay to defend our Delphi. We may all flee to the mountains while the god alone fights for us. We of the household also must make haste to go.”

It was almost a pleading look which poor Dryas bent upon his father.

“You can go if you will, Dryas. For my part, I shall not leave the shrine.”

Again Dryas took a long breath. His cheek paled and he looked down, then he said:

“I might have known you would answer that. I shall stay with you.”

CHAPTER XXXIII AT EËTÍON’S CALL

What Dryas reported was true. The Delphians were deserting their town, whether from great faith or great fear, who could say? Their temple guard could not be called an army. It seemed as vain to wait for the Persian as to wait for the onsweep of a flood at the breaking of a dam. The dam had broken at Thermopylæ and the flood was coming.

Men sent their wives and children across the gulf to Corinth and thence to Achaia, and when there were no more boats others sent them to Amphissa in Locris. The men of Delphi hurried up into Mount Parnassos, to the Korykian cave and to other fastnesses known only to themselves.

Only about sixty people were left in Delphi and of course the armed temple guard.

Nikander sought out Melantho.

“Dear wife,” he said, “I have chartered a little boat to take you and your own special slaves to Corinth. It will be a long journey for you, but do not be afraid. You will be safe in Achaia.”

“And Theria?” she asked.

“Would God I could send her!” said Nikander brokenly. “But she is too ill to be moved. She is weaker than ever since that terrible experience with the priests. Even were she strong enough, the priests would not allow her to go. The Pythia is not allowed to go away.”

He looked up, wondering at Melantho’s silence. Melantho was a timid creature and the most submissive wife in the world.

“Am I like the kegs of cheese that they carry up to the cave?” she asked huskily.

“Kegs of cheese!” asked Nikander blankly.

“Am I goods and chattels, not even so much alive as the dogs of Delphi? The dogs stay.”

Great Paian! Melantho was angry. Nikander had never seen her angry in his life.

She stamped her foot.

“I will not go,” she cried. “I’ll turn over the boat and swamp it if you put me in it. I will not go when—when all my dear ones stay.”

Then she melted with streaming tears. Poor Melantho! After this little outburst she would have done anything Nikander required.

But Nikander took her in his arms, loving her as he had never thought to do.

“My dear Melantho,” he said. “I begin to think I am the stupidest man in Delphi. Of course you shall stay.”

It was no easy matter to care for two helpless women at such a time, but Nikander was glad that Melantho was to stay. As for Baltè, nations might rise or fall, she had one care only, to watch her nurseling. And now Baltè was busy with new plans. She had long ago given up her sieve and taken it back to the kitchen where she gave it a kick of scorn.

Theria was steadily growing weaker, but her eyes as Baltè studied them looked not quite so glassy, not quite so blank as at first. Sometimes Baltè actually saw in them a great sadness. When any one came into the door, Theria’s eyes would slowly, painfully direct themselves thither, seeming to search, and when the search was made this deep sadness or disappointment would settle upon her face. And once, instead of relapsing into blankness after their pitiful searching, the dark eyes closed and tears stole down between the lids.

What did her child want? Baltè asked herself this question. Asked Theria every question she knew. For while Nikander could not bring himself to speak to that strange, blank face of Theria, Baltè talked and asked and crooned as any nurse crooned to her baby.

Though to all her asking Baltè received no reply, yet at last she thought she knew her darling’s wish.

The next day she met Nikander in the outer aula.

“Master,” she said, “I know now what little mistress wants.”

“Great Heaven! has she spoken?” asked Nikander.

“No, Master, but her eyes speak to me.”

“They do not to me,” said Nikander sorrowfully.

“Oh, Master, ye must not be wroth with little mistress if I tell ye that she loves that good youth that found her on the mountain. Don’t ye blame her for it. She is a human child and Eëtíon loves her so dearly. She wants to see him, Master. She wants to see him.”

“Poor Baltè, you cannot know that.”

Baltè told what she had seen.

“You forget,” said Nikander, “that your little mistress is priestess. It would be absolutely improper.”

“She’s goin’ soon where there’s no proper nor unproper,” retorted Baltè in her broadest Doric. “An’ if she goes, what harm to gi’ her this wee bit of joy beforehand? An’ if she dies for lack of it, then it’s ye will be her murderer.”

Baltè was determined to supplicate her master with the unrefusable supplication if she could get consent no other way.

But at this moment came Eëtíon, all excited over what the priests had done.

“It’s ye I am talkin’ o’, young man,” announced Baltè. “The master here says ‘no’. But the little mistress is pinin’ away for a sight of ye. She is thot.”

“Is she better? Did she ask—oh, Nikander——” pleaded Eëtíon.

“Baltè is dreaming. Go back to your little mistress, Baltè.”

But Baltè stood her ground. “If the lad calls her she’ll answer him. Mark ye that.”

“Will she answer? Do you really believe she will answer?” asked Eëtíon, his lips quivering with the memory of Theria’s unanswering silence on the mountain.

“O love o’ Leto, stop askin’! Come!” said Baltè.

And Nikander suddenly consented.

Eëtíon came in with awe as one comes into a death chamber.

He knelt by her couch, laid his brown, trembling hands over her two white ones, and, leaning close, called her—once, and again.

Then an amazing thing happened: There passed slowly from off the dark lakes of eyes something as it were a shadow, leaving them sweet and sensible, leaving in them an ardent, dreamy look.

Then the dream gave place to lovely awakening, which was Theria’s self—a surprised, outreaching love.

Her lips framed a word: “Eëtíon.”

Eëtíon forgot all about him. He gathered her close, kissing her, calling her. And now she spoke quite aloud, calling him in return with names and epithets as dear.

“You have not forgotten me,” he was saying, “Oh, I thought you had forgotten.”

“Never, never. I could not forget you in Acheron,” was her murmured answer.

“Speak to me, me, also, my daughter,” pleaded Nikander.

“Yes, Father. Dear, dear Father,” came her answer. No trace of fear or unaffection for all his angry words which had sent her away. She reached out her arms to him like a returning child.

Baltè clapped her hands with loud sobs and shoutings. She, too, must kiss and rejoice over her little one.

“Baltè,” said Nikander solemnly, “may the gods in my age give me such wisdom as yours. For my part I shall never question yours again. So now, dear Baltè, go and fetch Melantho.”

Melantho came, and Dryas. One would have thought to hear the rejoicings in the house that no Persians were anywhere in Greece. Then presently Baltè was for sending them all away. They must not tire her darling.

Theria clung to her lover’s hands. “Will you come again, Eëtíon?” she pleaded. “Say you will come again.”

Nikander doubtfully opened his lips but Baltè waved a warning finger.

“Indeed an’ he will, my darlin’,” she said with authority. “Old Baltè will see that he does.”

And Eëtíon, leaping up, kissed Baltè’s withered cheek, at which Theria’s first sweet laugh was heard.

CHAPTER XXXIV EËTÍON AND NIKANDER

Nikander and Eëtíon went out hand in hand as was the custom of Greek men who loved each other.

“Dear youth, what can I say to you?” spoke Nikander. “You have returned to me my two children, my son and now my daughter.”

“I love your daughter. I love your daughter,” spoke out Eëtíon passionately. “Now you know it. I want her for my wife.”

“Would you could have her,” was Nikander’s answer.

“But can I not?” questioned the unreasonable youth.

“My dear boy, you know she is priestess. I wish Apollo had killed me before I made her priestess.”

Eëtíon clenched his hands. “She shall not go back to the Pythia House. She is too splendid, too free-minded.”

“She shall certainly never go upon the tripod,” responded Nikander. “I will promise you that.”

Eëtíon paced the room in bitter distress. “How could you make her priestess?” he said, forgetting all kindness. “How could you take away her last chance for action and noble living? You don’t deserve to be Theria’s father.”

“Indeed I do not,” was Nikander’s sorrowful rejoinder. He laid quieting hands upon the youth.

“We are in dark days, Eëtíon. Perhaps not one of us will be alive to-morrow. Let us not grieve over what may not in any case come to pass.”

“The hope would be so much,” said Eëtíon with sudden tears. Eëtíon’s fortunate beauty made each emotion of his appealing, whether bowing the head in grief or lifting it with sudden smile. Nikander loved him for his grief and, forgetting his own bitter share in it, set about earnestly to calm him.

“My dear boy,” he said, “in the coming battle you will forget this love for a maid. It will be unimportant in the light of great deeds. Men love other men with such devotion and companioning but hardly a maid.”

“But this is Theria,” said Eëtíon childishly.

“Yes,” mused the father proudly. “It is Theria.”

“Do you know,” went on Eëtíon in a low voice, “I thought she was a goddess the first time I saw her. I really did. It was in the Precinct of Athena. I was weeping aloud with misery because my work of four years was brought to naught and I was pushed back into slavery, for I had been long in bondage. And Theria came leaping down the hill in the morning light. She spoke to me. (Oh, such wonderful kindness to which I had long been a stranger.) Then afterward, O Nikander, she saved me. Braving all sorts of punishment, she saved me. Could a man have done more than that? Is it any wonder that I love her?”

Nikander felt it his duty to dissuade the youth from a love so hopeless—but he suddenly had no word to say. That love seemed so sweet and right and pure. He was proud that this daughter of his had called it forth.

The youth went on:

“We of Argos are worshippers of Hera. There is a saying among us that the ‘Souls who follow Hera desire a love of royal quality.’ Hera cherishes the lawful union of man and woman.”

Nikander’s head bowed lower. He had forgotten this further obstacle that Eëtíon was a metic. The union was impossible. From every side, impossible. With grieving face Nikander turned and left Eëtíon where he stood.

CHAPTER XXXV THERIA TELLS HER VISION

Nikander’s care was now to save as much of his household treasure as might be. Before this time his anxiety over his children had so beset him that he cared little whether anything else was saved or not. But now he set slaves to packing the family records, the old Nikander drinking vessels of gold and silver, and the stores of corn, oil, and wine. Theria’s storeroom soon bore a changed aspect.

Then the most faithful slaves he sent with these things up into the mountain to the Korykian cave.

But even with this business Nikander found time to go ever and again to Theria’s bedside to stop perhaps but for a single caress or word or question.

Theria was sitting up in her couch and keeping poor Baltè busy running for this and that to occupy her.

“Father!” she said, holding up her five fingers brightly as he came toward her. “This is the fifth time you have come to me. I have counted.”

“Bless your heart, child, why do you count my visits?”

“Because they are my treasures,” she answered. “I used to see you only twice in the day and the time between was so long and stupid.”

Nikander bent and kissed her, not quite able to speak. He determined that this daughter should never again lack his companionship. Then a swift stab of memory reminded him how soon she must be returned to the Pythia House, where he could see her not at all.

He sat down beside her.

Baltè, seeing that he was there to watch in her stead, hurried off on some errand.

Baltè was no sooner gone than Theria bent near him.

“Father,” she said in awed tones, “I was not ill. I was held in dumbness by what I saw in the mountain.”

“Yes, Daughter,” he responded.

“The god crossed my path. Phœbus Apollo. I saw him!”

Even though Nikander had guessed this, he was startled at her telling.

“Oh, Father, so living beautiful he was, with the dawn in his face and power shining from all of him! All the statues in the Precinct should be broken. They are not my god.”

“We must leave them,” said her father gently, “for those of us who cannot see.”

“First,” she went on, “I saw only a golden light upon my path, which followed me and frightened me.”

Even as she spoke, her eyes grew starry and her father caught her shoulder, shaking her.

“No, do not tell me, child. Be still. The dumbness may come again.”

“No, it will not,” she smiled. “Apollo promised.”

“Great heaven, did he speak?”

“Yes, yes.” Then she told as near as she remembered the words of the message. Oracle it could hardly be called, as it was a revelation for her alone.

And how the god had turned and shot his terrible shaft away from her over Mount Parnassos toward the north.

Nikander was uplifted, overwhelmed. He went hastily and fetched tablet and stylus and wrote it down for the temple records. He was hopeful, fairly trembling from what he guessed this message might mean for his daughter’s future. Theria herself thought only of the god’s forgiveness.

“Apollo said that he loved me,” she repeated. “He said it. And he laughed at me because I wanted him to slay me.”

What would the priests think of this message of the god? Nikander hardly dared hope that they would put upon it the interpretation which he so desired. No pythia had ever been freed from priesthood. Indeed, if he told the vision, must it not bring them to a knowledge of her false oracle, the punishment of which would be death? His face grew set with thought. But yes, he would risk even that fate in the hope of what the god’s message might do for her. He kissed his child and hurried out to find Timon and the other priests.

How changed already were the streets, empty of folk. The houses closed and locked or left open in the haste of flight, showing the vacant rooms.

He found Timon in the Precinct. But Timon was wholly indifferent to Theria’s part of the god’s message. It was the hurtling shaft of Phœbus which interested him. “It was shot toward Parnassos, you say? That is a good omen,” he asserted. Nikander could not be sure. But he soon saw that the priests were too beset now with their fears and instant business to consider Theria’s status as priestess—the matter so dear to his heart.

“A party of Phokian peasants,” said Timon, “came into town this morning, fleeing from the Persians. Their tidings are horrible. The armies have overrun all the land of Phokis. They are killing men, outraging women, burning towns. Drymos is burned. Charadra, Amphikaia, Neon, Elateia, and many more. They have burnt the temple of Apollo at Abai. Do you not think, Nikander, that that may mean perhaps that they are headed the other way toward Athens and will pass us by?”

For Abai was on the eastern road.

“I do not,” said Nikander. “If they burnt the god’s temple at Abai, they will not spare his temple at Delphi. The Persian prisoners are telling that Xerxes the king knows more exactly what is treasured in our temples than he knows the treasures in his own palace. He will not spare Delphi.”

“I have sent my wife, daughters, and slaves to Achaia,” said Timon. “If I am killed and you spared, Nikander, you will send them word?”

Something in Nikander’s face stopped him.

“I am sorry,” he added, “that you may not send Theria away. No priest would allow it. The Oracle without a pythia at such a time as this!”

“My wife is staying, too,” replied Nikander, not without pride.

“Then I advise you to bring all up within the Precinct walls as soon as possible,” urged his kinsman.

CHAPTER XXXVI REFUGE IN THE PRECINCT

In Delphi, where all was danger, the Precinct was perhaps the most dangerous place, yet Nikander with his faith did not think this, nor would any other Greek think it.

He hurried home and sought Melantho.

“We must go up to the Precinct at once,” he said. “Make ready as soon as you can.”

In an hour’s time they were all gathered with the slaves in the men’s aula. Bundles of clothes and little treasures were in their hands. Some of the slaves were weeping, but the family stood in that awed silence which precedes departure.

Theria seemed even yet but distantly touched by the world’s alarms. The calm of the vision mood was still upon her. Nikander believed that she would never wholly recede from this but would always retain that serenity of mind which marks one who has beheld a god.

Eëtíon came in asking for Dryas, but, seeing Theria there in her cloak, of course forgot all else. Theria was shy, but Eëtíon took her in his arms quite frankly and kissed her. Nikander looked upon them with an aching heart, thinking how many a hedge shut out happiness from these two.

Meanwhile, Dryas was pacing nervously to and fro under the balcony. Nikander averted his eyes. He could not bear that his son should be in the pangs of personal fear. But Eëtíon went directly to Dryas.

“Dryas,” he said, “would it not be well for you to take a last survey of all the rooms to see that nothing is left? Do it quickly, for all is ready.”

Dryas hurried off with just the sense of relief which Eëtíon had meant to afford him.

And as Eëtíon once more stood at Theria’s side, Nikander said to him:

“I want you, Eëtíon, to be with us in the Precinct as a son of the house. A son could not be more dear.”

Dryas returned.

“I’ve been through the rooms,” he said brightly. “There’s nothing worth while but this old thing in the storeroom.”

It was Lycophron’s old lyre which Theria had used all these years.

“Oh, yes, yes, I want it,” said Theria, taking it in her arms.

“Are we all ready now?” asked Nikander.

Theria began to look around. Her face flushed, then paled. Then she asked the question which Nikander had been dreading.

“Where is Lycophron, Father? Why isn’t he with us?”

Nikander put his arm about her and led her away from the others.

“Oh,” she said in a frightened voice, “I remember now. Father, did he go clean away—away from us?”

“My dear child, he is dead,” said Nikander, without tears. Then he told her of the kind oath of the kinsmen. Theria, too, must keep that secret.

But she only clung to him, sobbing. Eëtíon came to comfort her and before long she was able to go with them out toward the Precinct.

It was natural that the few remaining Delphians should cling as close as possible to the Great Temple. Nikander saw to his regret that the only obvious refuge for Theria was the Pythia House. It was the only building besides the temple itself upon the temple platform. Into the old prison place she must go.

But Melantho went in with her. And there was also an old blind woman, too feeble for fight, and a young mother borne on a litter with her hour-old child. Nikander was allowed to go in and out as the one upon whom all depended, and in front of the house Eëtíon and Dryas kept guard.

The great danger had broken down all conventions.

Before nightfall Nikander took Melantho and Theria out through a small gate of the Precinct wall, which was just back of the Pythia House. He gave Theria the gate key. Then he led them up a little path amid the talus of the cliff to where there was a tomb against the hillside. Nikander had caused a narrow hole to be made in the side of the tomb where a thick laurel bush would hide it. The door of the tomb itself presented a sealed front. Hither Nikander had brought provisions and here—so near by and yet secure—he told Theria she must come with her mother should the Persians enter the Precinct.

As they turned back toward the Pythia House he gave Theria a small sharp dagger.

“You will not use it too soon I know, for you are brave. You will know the moment if it comes. It is for both of you.”

With a strange sense that all this was quite a usual thing to do, they came back through the gate.

At twilight Nikander, passing Theria’s door, saw her with her head down, weeping quietly. He came and sat beside her, questioning her.

“It is Lycophron,” she said through her tears. “Oh, Father, I loved him! He was so good to me!”

Now Nikander’s grief for Lycophron had been bitter and lonely. He could hardly share it with Dryas, and Melantho knew nothing of the truth. So the grief haunted him like a hovering Erinyes.

“We must remind ourselves that it is best as it is,” he said dryly.

“Yes, best for him, but I miss his goodness. No matter who is kind to me I shall miss his kindness.”

“Was he so kind to you?” said Nikander. For there in the house, as so often happens, the father had not guessed the bond between these youngsters.

“Yes. Always he would stop and tell me the news I was hungry to know. He would spend time upon me when no one else thought of me. And, Father, when I was here dying of loneliness Lycophron sent Baltè to me—I know it was disobedient, but it was so kind. He gave Baltè money to use for bribes so she could get in and as if that were not enough, he sent me messages, just the ones that he knew I wanted most. He had a heart of gold!”

Suddenly Nikander bowed his head low in a passion of weeping. The unexpected praise—the unexpected bringing back of his son into the sweetness of the family life, broke him down completely.

Theria threw her arms about him, frightened at her thoughtlessness.

“Oh, Father, I should have thought of you before I said it,” she faltered.

“Dear child, you have given me something that I thought was for ever lost,” he answered.

He went out readier for the hard to-morrow than he had deemed possible.

BOOK IV THE GOD WILL CARE FOR HIS OWN

CHAPTER XXXVII THE PERSIAN COMES

The night was deepening. Eëtíon and Dryas, fully armed, stood guard together on the temple platform not far from the Pythia House. Nikander, at their insistence, had gone within the house. He was sleeping, worn out by his anxieties for children and state.

“Do you think,” spoke Dryas in a low voice, “that even now the host may go on toward Athens and leave us out of their march?”

“It is possible,” returned Eëtíon. “The Persians have no time to lose in the direction of Athens. Their marching to Abai is a good sign for Delphi.”

Meanwhile, Delphi was armed for the Medes’ immediate coming. Most of the Precinct guards were stationed at the great gate. The small gates facing the highway had a few men each, but the gates in the back wall were entirely without guard—a pitiful preparation truly for the coming of a hundred myriads of men.

It was a showing forth of the Delphians’ despair. The best they could do was so far short of adequate defence that this seemed nor less nor more.

Suddenly, as the two friends stood there in the night, they saw a glow break on the far heights east of Pleistos Valley, very red and brightening, brightening!

“Look,” said Dryas, between lips which hardly parted. “Eëtíon, that light up there!”

One of the old temple guardsmen approached.

“That will be up Daulis way,” he said. “They’ve set fire to Daulis.”

Neither Dryas nor Eëtíon made comment. They knew only too well what it meant.

The Persians were heading for Delphi! And were now not two hours away!

Dryas hurriedly sent a slave to fetch wine.

“Don’t do that,” advised Eëtíon. “The wine will help you now, but later it will weaken your arm.”

Dryas clapped his hands together in pitiful misery.

“Why don’t you hate me, kick me out for the dog I am? Why did you ever try to save me?”

“Hush, hush,” said Eëtíon. He laid his hand on Dryas’s arm. “Your father must not hear you.”

“Why, Eëtíon! Your hand is cold as ice.”

“Of course it is, foolish boy, do you suppose other men are made of wood and only you feel what must be hid?”

“Oh, Eëtíon, forgive—forgive me,” pleaded the emotional Dryas.

“This inaction now, this waiting,” said Eëtíon soberly, “is the hardest part of the battle. I have not been in battles myself, but old soldiers tell me so. Think, Dryas, you have father, mother, sister to protect. I have no one I can call my own—and no city.”

“Father would give you Theria,” whispered Dryas, “if he could get her free. And oh, Eëtíon, I know he feels that Delphi is your city. I feel that Delphi is your city.”

All night long Dryas had been assailed by a horrible picture of his own death. His highly developed imagination swept the thing through him like a reality. It was a spear-thrust in his side, keen and fatal, the grinning face of a Persian triumphing over him. Dryas tried to think other thoughts, but this thing returned again and again, sometimes with an actual pain where the weapon was thrust in. Dryas could have conquered it but for the fear-producing chant which old Akeretos kept up near the Great Altar.

All night long the old prophet moved to and fro—making sacrifices, trying omens of all sorts, seeing portents where none were, an eerie, aged figure in the starlight with his white beard wagging and his hands lifted on high.

Dawn began to break in the slow beautiful way as if the day were to be all gentleness instead of the most dreadful day these hills had ever known.

At full morning Nikander came out refreshed, to share with Dryas and Eëtíon the morning meal. He was in armour, for Nikander was yet in full fighting strength.

They were eating in silence when Dryas with a cry jumped to his feet.

“Look, look,” he said. “There on the uppermost road!”

The road from Daulis, winding down the distant mountains among the crags, was several times visible and lost again ere it reached Delphi. Now on its highest, farthest stretch the Delphians saw moving spots, like groups of ants, carrying ant burdens. Even as the Delphians were gazing, the spots became a solid mass, which filled the road from end to end of its visible stretch.

They could not tell now that the mass was moving. Simply the road at that point was curiously black.

Dryas’s cry brought Theria from the house. She noted the looks and gestures of the men, then stole over to Eëtíon’s side. The others were too intent to notice what she did.

“What is it?” she asked.

He pointed out the black stretch of distant road and she knew by the horror in his face what it meant.

Eëtíon was not a natural soldier. Only training and Hellas-love had made him such. But now with Theria beside him, the horror in his face changed to iron resolve. Theria hardly recognized him as he turned toward her.

“Theria, there is no chance for Delphi now,” he whispered. “Your father has told me of your hiding place. I shall keep as near to it as I may, but the gods only know whither the battle will thrust me. If I escape, I’ll come to you. I’ll speak outside a pass-word, ‘Hera basileia,’ because Hera is my goddess at home.”

“Yes,” she whispered, clinging to his hand, “but add ‘Paian will care for his own.’”

He could not but catch the hope which lived with her, the peace which her vision had left upon her.

He bent and kissed her, almost believing that they should both be saved.

Only Dryas saw him do it, Dryas, whom Eëtíon had forgotten in this moment of snatched joy, Dryas, whose struggle had now grown so intense that it seemed every moment he must break away. The hills were still there to hide in, so near, so possible a refuge. Was it worth while standing there to be slaughtered? This was no battling for Delphi. It was foolishness. They were all of them fools—fools—fools!

Now Nikander came to him. “Son,” he said reassuringly, “I am thankful you are here.”

Dryas did not answer, for at this moment a low exclamation broke from all the little group at once.

The Persians had emerged on the lower road!

Now could be caught the moving colour of their garments, flashes of bronze, as shields glanced the light, and now a moving bulk of shivering glitter as a host of upright spears advanced.

Nearer, nearer! Well seen now at the foot of Delphi’s own cliffs, well seen at the foot of Phaidriades, well seen below in the Precinct of Athena Forethought in Delphi village!

Pointed caps, huge wicker shields, tall lances, these were the Medes themselves. Behind them, a curious barbarian folk in hooded mantles, and oh, dear Paian, what are these? Men black as ebony, clad in skins of leopard and lion, carrying bows twice as tall as themselves. Some have woolly heads, others have heads not human at all but horse heads, with upright ears and flowing manes. Behind these come tribes and tribes and tribes, greedy, pitiless, devouring.

Look far up the mountain road! Every visible loop is filled back to where it is lost in distance. Oh, Apollon, surely you have forgotten! Son of Leto, you are far off this day, joying among your Olympians. Our Delphi is naught to you!

What happened now can hardly be believed, but it is recorded by the father of history and later writers bear testimony to it.

This had happened time and time again in the past to the hurt of Delphi, why not happen this once to her help? Herodotus says it did happen.

Eëtíon, Dryas, Theria, Nikander heard groan as if the earth, old Gê herself, had spoken. A little bird singing in the laurel bush near by stopped its song and leaped aloft with frightened cries. Then like a wave on the sea-beach the temple platform beneath their feet pitched forward. They saw the wave motion run onward upon the earth, down the glen, and to the farther hillside where the forests received it shivering. The Delphian group on the platform stumbled wildly forward. Old Akeretos fell flat before his altar. The altar itself shook and the Great Temple rocked as if about to begin an elephantine dance.

The earth movement was distinct, outward from Parnassos toward the valley.

Theria, looking up at Phaidriades, saw the cliffs nodding solemnly to each other as if to say: “Ay—so be it.”

Then huge rocks flew hurtling from their summits high overhead and down upon the road, down crashing upon the moving Persian host!

There was a great and bitter cry, death, terror, confusion.

The Persian army fled this way and that. Forward toward the village—downward into the Forethought Precinct where the avenging rocks of Delphi followed them.

Everywhere the mountains sent up clouds and clouds of dust. In the distance upon the distant armies poured down avalanches of earth and rolling stones and dust—more dust!

Of the little group on the temple platform Dryas was the first to get upon his feet.

“Hail, Paian; Alala, Alala!”

He shouted the old Dorian war cry and, waiting not for Eëtíon nor his father, charged down the Sacred Way. His spear was forward-ready; his shield weightless upon his arm. His hair streamed from his helmet upon the wind. He was light-footed as a god. So might Achilles have swept into battle after his days of wrath.

Eëtíon and Nikander, with a score of temple guards, leaped after him. The great gates had already been flung open by the earth’s motion.

“Ai, Ai! look up! Look up. Behold our avenging god!”

It was old Akeretos shouting in a frenzy which Theria had to obey. Her upward glance caught the bronze votive chariot of Gelon just as it toppled from its lofty eyrie in the cliffside. Down it came! Chariot, horses, victor and charioteer, banging on jutting rock and crag with grand clangour, a divine and shattering noise.

“And there happened to the Persians yet greater portents,” says the historian. “Two men in full armour and of stature more than human followed them slaying and pursuing.”

Meanwhile Dryas in the midst of battle knew only that he was struggling amid a sea of men. Persian warriors, who in spite of their terror of the supernatural happenings, fought the pursuing Delphians desperately and tried thus to preserve their fleeing hordes.

Dryas dealt blow after blow, stroke after stroke. Better yet, he received wounds uncaring, and with every wound, every stroke, the gods gave him manhood and courage.

Surely after tasting so sweet a thing as courage he could not ever go back to cowardice. The Nikander in him grew to full stature in these moments.

Oh, heaven! Eëtíon had fallen. Dryas rushed to him, holding over him the shield while he fought. More wounds were here. Then, Paian be praised, Eëtíon struggled to his feet.

Where were they now? Out beyond Delphi, a mile out on the Daulis road and the Persians, Assyrians, Arabians, Ethiopians in full retreat.

Oh, what was Dryas doing now? Struggling, shouting, brandishing his arms in foolish wildness, while Eëtíon and Nikander adjured him to keep still, that all was past.

CHAPTER XXXVIII THANKFULNESS

Surely never was a happier, humbler band of victors than these who now returned along the road to the Precinct. Nikander and Eëtíon bearing Dryas on a litter, the temple guardsmen now laughing aloud with some recollection of battle triumph, now awed into silence, as one of them told of the divine shoutings he had heard, or the terrible dealing of those rocks which fell from on high upon the enemy.

The other Delphians who had rushed down from hiding in the hills kept silence. Every one of them was wishing that he had stayed with the guard in the Precinct.

Outside the gate Theria met them with outstretched arms and tears of joy. She kissed Eëtíon and her father, and knelt down by Dryas’s litter, bending over him in love.

“Darling Dryas.” Then, “Quick, I must help him.”

Dryas’s face was white with pain, but he caught her hand.

“I am safe now,” he whispered. “Really, really safe!”

He closed his eyes.

“He saved my life,” spoke Eëtíon proudly.

“And fought better than any of us. Oh, my son. Dear, dear boy!” cried Nikander.

“I saw him in the fight,” asserted one of the guard. “That’s true what you say.”

In the entrance portico of the Precinct they set him down, while Theria sent slaves for water and wine and other slaves homeward for the remedies of her own.

Soon she was bathing Dryas’s deep wounds, staunching their flow with the wine, setting the poor broken leg, which, while it would mend, would never let Dryas walk perfectly straight again.

Dryas bore his pain with a look which ever and again started her tears, the look of a child come home.

As soon as Melantho came to replace her Theria turned to attend Eëtíon’s wounds. She knelt before him, binding up his bleeding ankle, then carefully washed the deep gash in his shoulder where the sword had grazed over the top of his shield. Her heart sang with the task.

Nikander, perhaps because he was an older, more skilful warrior, had received only scratches. Indeed the fight had not been long. The Persians had been conquered by the god ere ever man struck one blow.

More and more Delphians crowded into the Precinct. The happy news seemed to have mounted on wings of its own to those who had been hidden on Parnassos.

They came down in groups or singly, and each as he entered had to hear the story again from those fortunate ones who had stayed. All the talk was of the wonders, the portents, the direct action of the god. They told each other the tales which were to become the rich traditions of their race. Their faith grew with the telling.

And who shall say that their faith was vain? Even we to-day receive the benefit of that strange repulse, which helped to keep Europe what it was, to make it what it is to-day. We may not explain it as they did, but the mysterious, deciding succour is a basic historical fact. Apollo had saved more than his visible treasures by this prompt defence.

Now other Delphians came in with armfuls of battle-litter they had found on the road, the curious wicker shields, despicable in Greek eyes, rich torn garments, gold chains, head pins set with rubies, the silly Persian caps which set them all a-laughing, and whole mule-packs of trousers which made them laugh still more.

“Men, full-grown men, to hamper their legs with such a foolish gear!”

They found also the curious horse heads which the black men had worn. They were but skins flayed, with ears and mane remaining.

“And we thought those were monsters and were afraid!” laughed one.

“But all the gold must be saved for the god, no gift of ours, but his own, his right,” said another.

Instantly all assented to this. Their hearts were dewy fresh with gratitude. They were like noisy, happy children.

Melantho was bending over Dryas. He had reacted now from the first shock and was restless with fever.

“Oh, let us go home,” pleaded Melantho. “See, this is no place for my sick boy. Oh, I want to go home.”

Poor home-body, she was almost in terror at being from under her accustomed roof.

Nikander held Dryas’s hand. His face clouded as he answered her.

“If we go, we shall have to do without Theria’s help,” he answered.

“I can care for my son,” said Melantho. “But Theria—surely to-day the priests will let her——”

Nikander was looking away. “I do not dare to provoke them,” he said very low.

Dryas stirred with a moan of pain.

“Yes, wife,” said Nikander decisively. “I know that we should go.”

He went over to where Theria and Eëtíon together were binding up the leg of a stout young guardsman, he howling with true Greek ardour.

Nikander touched Theria’s arm.

“Daughter,” he said, “Dryas is growing worse and I fear we must take him home.”

“Yes; and, Father, we must see that the litter-slaves walk slowly and very steadily. I will try——”

Tears filled Nikander’s eyes.

“Dear heart, I wish I could take you with us. I do not dare to take you,” he said.

Theria whitened as sorrow stole over and fixed itself upon her face.

She moved close to him.

“I had forgotten,” she whispered. “Oh, Father, I want to go home—home!”

Nikander answered nothing. He could not answer. He led her over to a corner.

“Oh,” she moaned, “that I should have begged to be priestess. How foolish, witless——”

“I was the fool to allow you. But remember, Daughter, always remember the deed which priesthood let you do. Your Prayer to the Winds was answered, abundantly answered. You helped to save the fleet, my darling. And you did it thinking you must die for doing it.”

His praise took her by surprise, but it only made it more impossible to part from him.

She stole into his arms like a frightened child. He dared not tell her the hope he had for her. It was too faint a hope for that. He knew well that his best comforting was to remind her of what her priesthood had accomplished.

“Your Salamis oracle. We have yet to hear from that. The battle must even now be raging at Athens. They tell me that never would Themistokles have kept the Athenians to their task but for that oracle to hearten them. You gave the oracle as being your own, but you know now it was the god’s.”

She was trembling with the sobs she must keep still.

“And, Daughter, never go to the tripod again,” he urged. “Promise me that.”

“Never, never the tripod,” she answered.

“No matter how they push you, no matter what rites.”

“No—no.”

Here Eëtíon came over to them, asking, “What is it?” and before they answered knowing what it was.

“But no, no, no, Nikander. Not the Pythia House again,” he pleaded.

Nikander had to take charge with decision.

“It must be, Eëtíon. It must be. Go, Eëtíon, and take Dryas home. I will care for Theria.”

There was no chance for good-bye in what the lovers felt to be the last parting.

As for Nikander, mounting the Sacred Way with his arm about his child, the joy of victory, the safety of Delphi, were lost in bitter heartaches and self-reproach.

CHAPTER XXXIX NIKANDER PLEADS FOR HIS DAUGHTER

Early next morning Nikander returned to the Precinct. The smoke of the Great Altar was lifting in a glorious column. Not one priest of Delphi but had promised gifts to the Far-Darter if he would but save them. And now they were offering those gifts.

Nikander mingled with the crowd on the temple platform. He was heavy hearted where all were gay. Old Akeretos was sitting on the temple steps worn out with hours of ritual. A little squat Delphic farmer was talking to him. Near by stood two cloaked females.

“And, Akeretos,” said the eager little man, as if driving a bargain, “you can’t get any better anywhere. The two of ’em at once and portents to both of ’em.”

“Bring them here,” said the old shrine president.

The man pushed the two females to the front and without ceremony flicked off their veils.

He showed two girls as alike as two peas. They were peasant-built but flabby. Their faces, brown because the sun had made them so, had somehow a look of paleness under the brown. The eyes of both were large and haunted as if with ill-health. They were simpering with the excitement.

“Hyeroche, here, is the oldest,” went on the farmer. “Before she was born my wife had a dream. Any of the neighbours can tell ye, for, Paian help us, she told it enough! She dreamed that she was searchin’ for her baby in the mountains, an’ she found it, a little weepin’ thing lyin’ on top of a milkin’ stool. She started to take it off of the milkin’ stool, but quick, the milkin’ stool shot up tall with its three legs, a very tripod, an’ she couldn’t reach the baby.

“Now I ain’t no reader of dreams. But what do ye think o’ that, Akeretos? Doesn’t it seem pointin’ the baby to be Pythia?”

Old Akeretos nodded. He was much impressed.

“An’ this other one here, Timo, before she was born, Paian help us, the same dream to her, too.”

Akeretos was not listening. He was studying the girls. Well did he know the successful Pythia type.

The little farmer turned to Nikander. “Now ain’t they just made for Pythias?” he demanded, “the both on ’em, an’ free-born Delphians both.”

Nikander studied them. He was trying to keep his judgment clear and unbiassed by his earnest wish. If these girls were made Pythias at once would it not afford a chance to secure his daughter’s freedom?

Akeretos turned to Nikander.

“These might put your daughter into the background,” he said. “You will forgive me, Nikander, if I say that these have more the Pythia look than has Theria.”

“My daughter is not the Pythian type,” said Nikander, trying to speak indifferently. “I realize that, Akeretos. Anyway, we require three Pythias. It has been the custom and is right.”

That afternoon a council of all the priests was held to decide upon the farmer girls.

Beforehand Nikander sought his kinsman Timon. Perhaps Timon would listen now as he would not on that other occasion when Nikander had spoken—then when the Persians were so nigh at hand. Nikander must steer his course carefully. Timon must not suspect the dangerous truth—Theria’s deception on the tripod. Yet Nikander must bring forth every argument possible for his child’s release.

“Timon,” he began, “I am feeling more and more that my daughter Theria is not the Pythia type.”

“Not the type!” repeated his kinsman. “But she gave magnificent oracles, Nikander. Very unusual oracles. And the manner of giving was unusual, also. Do not you think so?”

Timon looked sharply at Nikander, or did Nikander fancy it? Nikander had much ado to keep himself steady and unmoved. He hastily changed the subject.

“Yes, they were good oracles. But the girl is breaking too fast under the ecstasy. That, of course, would make me wish to have her cease prophesying. But that is not all. I would not let mere personal feelings sway me. You know that, Timon.”

“Yes.”

“Theria had a vision on the mountain. You have no doubt of that, have you?”

Timon assented. To the Greek this was easy of belief. Timon had seen Theria in her state of trance. He had seen her yesterday, and even then the expression of her face showed the vision state through which she had passed. Yes, yes, Theria had seen a vision.

“She has lately told me more about it,” pursued Nikander. “Apollo spoke to her. She has told me the words of the god and I have written them down.”

With a hand he could not keep from trembling Nikander brought forth the tablet.

Timon read it slowly, as Greeks were wont to read. Again he read it. “No priestess of mine art thou.—Begone from my temple.—Nay, for I love thee—thou hast sung at my bidding.”

“Was all this in it when you spoke of this before?” asked Timon seriously.

“Yes, the same.”

“I remember only the silver shaft of Apollo. But this!—Why, Nikander, the god has actually driven the girl from his temple. It might even be dangerous to hold her there after this express command.”

“Do you think that?” queried Nikander eagerly. “Will you say that in the Council?”

“But suppose she is freed—what should then be done with her?” asked Timon.

But with this encouragement Nikander determined to apply formally to the Priests’ Council for her release.

Never in all his days would Nikander forget the bitter anxiety of that afternoon with the Council. Many strifes had he striven with that august body, strifes for the good name of Delphi, strifes for the honour and safety of Hellas, yet never one that had given him this suffocation at the thought of defeat.

Timon became his earnest helper and Nikander sorely needed help.

“Never before,” maintained the older priests, “never before had the Pythia been given back to her family or been given in marriage. It would cause a pestilence.”

But as the debate progressed Nikander gradually became aware of his own new power in the Council. For many months Nikander had been the sole one who had counselled resistance to the Persian. It was Nikander who had supplicated for the more hopeful oracles and received them. Suppose the more timid interpretations had prevailed, where would the Delphians now be?

Nikander had been right and his prayers had changed the mind of the god. Now Nikander was making a strange request. Might he not be right in this also? Surely Nikander would not ask this save in honest conviction. Had Nikander ever been selfish toward the shrine? Would he ask that his daughter be dismissed if it were likely to bring disaster? Did he not bring them now the god’s actual command: “Begone from my temple”?

Nikander saw friend after friend spring to his feet with arguments like these until his heart warmed and in a clear, impassioned speech he moved the Council to his side.

It was old Akeretos who made answer.

“Apollo has spoken to free the girl. It is not usual. But neither is it usual for Apollo to appear in person and hurl mountains upon the enemy. It is a time of portents and wonders. Let the girl be freed, and at once.”

Nikander’s brain whirled as this verdict was pronounced.

But a still further joy awaited him.

Kobon, who had always been his bitterest antagonist, now rose in the Council and proposed to elect Dryas, son of Nikander, to the priesthood, also to give Dryas the crown for the best warrior in yesterday’s battle.

CHAPTER XL AGAIN HOME

On leaving the Council, Nikander did what no other father in Hellas would have done: He went first to release his daughter before bringing the good news to his son.

He could not bear that Theria should learn her freedom from any but himself. Old Akeretos went with him to confirm his authority in the Pythia House. To tell the truth, they ascended the Precinct with no little trepidation.

If you had asked who ruled the priests in Delphi not one would have answered: “The old peasant woman Tuchè.” Yet such was the case. Tuchè had a tongue of fire. Akeretos knocked faintly, and the authoritative one herself appeared.

But she told the news quite otherwise than they had expected.

“Theria? No Pythoness, ye say? An’ did it take all ye men in day-long council to find that out? I knew it from the first. She’s no Pythia, no, not if she gave the best oracles ever. Take her away, do—before she puts notions into the heads of the two new ones, good as gold.”

Nikander did not wait for the finish. He ran past Tuchè to Theria’s room.

Theria sat there on her couch staring at nothing in the same melancholy apathy which before had so troubled the temple women. She did not rouse until her father stood quite before her. Then up went her longing hands.

“Father, Father,” she whispered amazedly.

But Nikander in his delight threw both arms about her.

“You are free, my own darling Theria, you are free,” he said. “The Council has freed you.”

But he should have been more careful with his news.

“No,” she said wildly. “Oh, I have to stay here. Here all my life—all my life.”

“Not one further minute,” he asserted. “Dear child, I have come to take you home.”

At this dear telling she burst into uncontrollable weeping. “Tuchè will not let me,” she kept saying like a frightened child. “No, she will not let me.”

“By the gods she will. Theria, quiet yourself. There, dear little one, Father will care for you now.”

He was like a tender nurse comforting her. He called the temple slave.

“Get this Pythia robe off my daughter at once,” he commanded. “Where is the white robe in which she came?”

He himself helped to fasten the shoulder pins, unheard-of service for a father. Often he kissed her when her tears ran down afresh. By his excitement he made it the harder for her to grow calm. Then he threw the himation over her head and face and hurried her out.

They reached home after a happy walk hand in hand. The open air was always tonic to Theria. She was her bright self again when they had reached the threshold. Melantho and Eëtíon were tending Dryas in the aula.

With a cry Eëtíon leaped up, knowing the beloved figure before her face was revealed. Melantho ran to her. Dryas reached out arms from his couch, calling, “Sister, Sister,” and the slaves came hurrying from everywhere.

Nikander had to explain a hundred questions how she came to be really free.

Dryas kept her hand affectionately.

“Now home will be home,” he said. “It has never been the same since you went away.”

“Dear Theria,” laughed Nikander, “even the fish have tasted wrong. I did not know you directed the cooking of the fish.”

Then he turned to Dryas.

“Dryas,” he questioned, “have they told you the news?”

“What news?”

Then all the joyfulness was to be gone through again as Nikander told of Dryas’s election to the priesthood and his crowning.

Nikander, being by nature courageous, was never quite to realize the struggle Dryas had had to win such a crown. But fine deeds he did know, and felt new kinship with his son and all the old love and pride. As the two were talking together, Eëtíon softly drew Theria aside.

How strong and heavenly the joy in his face as he kissed her. Theria had never known how godlike Eëtíon was until now, his eyes so shining upon her and so full of awe. What was this strange love which had come to her from the gods, a thing so unheard-of for a mere Greek girl? Their very silence together seemed holy, difficult to break.

“Oh, do you think that Father will allow——” she began; and then, realizing what she was about to ask, she blushed and hushed her speech.

“Allow us what, dear Theria?”

He lifted her hands in both of his, hardly listening to her words. And before he could answer Melantho broke in upon them.

“Great Heavens! Theria, what are you doing? What am I doing to let you stay here? Come back to our aula at once.”

Theria was too happy to be disobedient. She took her mother’s hand and went back with her to the women’s apartment where the door was quickly shut.

CHAPTER XLI A SCULPTOR’S RESPECTABILITY

Now that abnormal conditions were past, Nikander and his family returned to conventional ways. Theria must not meet nor see Eëtíon. Of course she must not. She must be shut in the women’s court whenever he came to the house.

Nikander gave his formal consent to the marriage. He loved Eëtíon with all his heart. The good youth now would have been his choice for Theria even if Theria had had no wish in the matter. Yet as the days went by Nikander dreaded the marriage. Marriage with a metic was indeed a serious step.

Nikander knew his daughter well. He knew that while she now made the sacrifice gladly that later when she saw her sons excluded from the priesthood, herself excluded from processional rites and perhaps taunted by women of her own class, Theria’s proud spirit would revolt. He even wondered if her love would outlast the strain. Love so burning bright in youth may be strangely quenched by hard conditions.

Nikander’s attitude unconsciously affected Eëtíon. He, too, now that he faced his marriage, realized how sad a sacrifice he was asking of her who had set him free.

He had hoped that Theria would speak to him from her window so that he could ask her of these things face to face. But this Theria was too loyal to do.

She sent her messages by her father.

“So soon will come our life-long happiness,” she said, “we must bear this parting now.”

At last Eëtíon was in serious misery for the trials looming ahead. He sent question to Theria by Nikander.

“Had she thought of all the future? Did she want to decide again?”

Nikander came back laughing.

“Never send me on such an errand again, young man,” he told him. “She was almost as abusive as old Tuchè herself. She said she had not supposed that you would so insult her. That if she were as great a fool as you seem to be she would retaliate by distrusting your love. But that she does not do. She trusts your love, and you by this time should trust hers.”

Eëtíon laughed joyously. “Apollo bless her! she is as lovely in her anger as in everything else!”

Upon which Nikander named him an Eros-infatuated youth.

But the incident cleared the air. From that time Nikander trusted his daughter’s decision. So, Melantho having made ready the linens, garments, and embroideries she considered essential, Theria and Eëtíon were betrothed before witnesses, solemnly in the aula. For a few happy moments they stood together and touched hands, though Theria had to be veiled. The ceremony was more binding than the wedding which was to follow later. Theria returned to her room knowing that now she belonged to Eëtíon as his goods and chattels belonged, but her heart was singing for joy.

It was at the betrothal feast, when it was too late for mending, that Eëtíon revealed his one defect.

They were chatting after the meal, or rather sitting silent while Eëtíon talked. For none of the youths of Delphi had had such adventures as Eëtíon, by storm of ocean, by cruelty of pirates, deceit of merchants in the ports. As a captive he had seen practically all the far ports of the West.

Eëtíon sat upright on his couch, too animated to recline, his dark eyes now brightening with some memory, now filling with terror or triumph. Near him was one of the many small tables of a Greek room.

Upon this table had been left, no doubt by Kairos himself, the god of chance, a double handful of smooth clay. It had been brought that morning by some citizens from far away who wanted to establish a sale for it in Delphi. Nikander had pronounced it the finest in texture he had ever seen. Then it had been left here.

Eëtíon idly picked it up as he talked, working it with his deft fingers.

Gradually it became soft, malleable. Absently he shaped it into a thick pillar, then, as if in sudden decision, began to mould it. He ceased talking, forgot his guests entirely, quite unconscious that they were watching what he did.

Under his swift fingers the clay soon took the form of a youth. “Look, it is beautiful,” whispered Dryas, wondering.

Now Eëtíon looked up impatiently, seized upon a plectrum as a tool, and began to work again in mad haste.

More and more lovely the little youth became, not standing on both feet in the old hieratic attitude, but leaning forward with one leg advanced as if running, head thrown back and both arms outstretched toward an invisible goal. Time passed by, but Eëtíon was unaware of it. Now began the muscle modelling, dry, and at points stylized, yet lovely and alive, the delicate thighs full of strength, the spare abdomen showing the play of running muscles, the chest lifted and full of breath.

“It is Ladas,” they cried, “Ladas, the Argive runner.”

Now Eëtíon began to etch the hair in fine-drawn lines in the old fashion and bind it down with a fillet. Nikander saw at once that this figure was the result of long and intense imagining of the mind. Eëtíon could not otherwise have modelled with such swiftness. The skill, too, was no idle skill, it was the result of long hours of training and toil.

At length it satisfied its creator. Eëtíon breathed deep, looked up and saw all the company gazing at him, and laughed a quick, embarrassed laugh.

“Eëtíon!” spoke Nikander, amazed. “Surely you are not a sculptor!”

Eëtíon hung his head. “I sometimes think I am,” he confessed.

“But your father Euclides was a high-born citizen. He surely would not give you over to the sculptor’s trade.”

“No,” answered Eëtíon. Then on the defensive, “But after all, Nikander, is there any nobler way of honouring the gods than by beautiful sculpture? What would Delphi be without its statues and its songs?”

“Oh, but Eëtíon, this is hand craft. See, your hands are soiled even now. Song is the work of the mind alone.”

“But you use the hand to play the lyre,” said Eëtíon, quickly hiding his dirty hands in his himation.

“Apollo presides over song,” retorted Nikander. “No such god fosters sculptor work.”

“There is Hephæstos.”

“The ugly lame god. By heaven, Eëtíon, you are no Hephæstos.” Everybody laughed. “The beautiful Eëtíon himself with the limping, grizzled one!”

“I am serious,” insisted Nikander; “you must explain this thing. Who taught you?”

“Ageladas,” answered Eëtíon, “but of course my father never knew.”

“Ah, no wonder you model well,” said Nikander, for Ageladas, the Argive, was the greatest teacher of sculpture in Greece.

“My pedagogos was Ageladas’s friend,” went on Eëtíon, “and he used to stop with me at Ageladas’s workshop on our way from school. I—well, I played with the clay as I do now and Ageladas saw and praised me. But oh, it was not the praise, it was the love of making beautiful gods and men which possessed me. All through my school hours I forgot my Homer, longing to be at work with Ageladas. I bribed my pedagogos again and again to bring me there. Myron was in the workshop, too, and I learned at his side. Then one day Ageladas told me he would exhibit one of my statues as his own.” Eëtíon laughed softly and tears came into his eyes.

“Ah, never shall I forget my father stopping by my own statue. ‘This is most beautiful of all,’ he said. ‘This youth pouring the libation. See how he worships, how shyly he supplicates before his god?’ Then such happiness welled up within me that I could not speak. Dear Father, he never guessed that the statue was mine.”

Nikander took Eëtíon’s hand.

“But now, Eëtíon, now that you are a Delphian, a son of my house, surely you will not do this curious thing, which no well-born citizen would do? Delphi will give you large activities.”

“No, dear Nikander,” answered Eëtíon gently. “No.”

He took the little runner and with a single fierce pressure sent him back into the clay whence he had come.

“Oh, don’t, don’t do that,” cried they all at once, for they loved its loveliness.

“It would perish anyway,” said Eëtíon sadly. “The clay would soon crack.”

CHAPTER XLII THE UNWILLING COLONIST

On the far-away coast of Sicily, the western outpost of the world, lay the little town of Inessa. One day men came from the neighbouring town Catana, attacked Inessa, and razed it to the ground. This was done while Theria was yet spinning at home, before she was immured in the Pythia House. And this one cruel act, performed by men she had never known, in a town whose name she had never heard, was to affect Theria’s life more profoundly than any act of father, mother, or brother.

It was her fate.

A purposeful intent thus seemed to run through circumstance, deflecting it toward a far-off goal.

Most of Inessa’s inhabitants were killed outright, but among those who were cast upon the world was an awkward youth—one Hyllos, son of Inessa’s most prominent citizen—but an ill-born young man who stammered abominably. This Hyllos being come to the shore of Phokis thought it a good opportunity to visit the Delphic Oracle and inquire for the curing of his speech.

But when Hyllos stood before the tripod the priestess answered not at all concerning his speech, but bade him:

He was so disappointed that he left the tripod almost before the Pythoness had finished speaking.

But from that hour misfortune followed Hyllos.

At last he became so frightened that he bestirred himself belatedly to obey the Oracle. He secured a ship and a few people willing to go to Sicily, but still he dreaded the colonizing task. And on the very day of Theria’s betrothal Hyllos reappeared in Delphi, praying to be released from Apollo’s command.

On this occasion the Oracle reproved him roundly.

Hyllos next morning met Nikander in the Precinct and to him poured out his troubles.

“I cannot rebuild Inessa, O priest,” he said. “Only a few poor shepherds are left there. Our Catanian neighbours in their raid upon us killed all our leading citizens. They carried away our wealth and destroyed everything. Inessa is ruined beyond repair. Oh, no doubt the god means to destroy me also, and takes this way of making me worthy of death.”

Nikander quieted the young man as was his wont, then bade him wait in Delphi until the priests should think and advise with each other over the problem.

The young man’s predicament interested Nikander. Like all Delphic priests he loved those far-away colonies of the west: Tarentum, Catana, Syracuse, Croton, Elia—scattered at right intervals along the coast of Greater Greece. They were young in power, wonderful places of sunny beach and wooded hill, while in their backlands were stretches of the richest soil in the world.

Almost all those cities had been either founded by the Oracle of Delphi or greatly helped by it. To some Delphi had given laws, to others had sent great leaders in times of need. In the case of Cyrene in Africa, the Oracle had, in some secret way, selected the site and insisted by repeated commands until the “fortunate city” had been built. Delphi retained no lordship over these colonies—her children. She was satisfied to feed their spirit and to receive in return their worship, their tithes, and free gifts.

Nikander left the young man and at once went into the cella of the Great Temple. Here in the closed back room he brought forth long-treasured maps of the priests, ancient ones of pottery, later ones of sheepskin and papyrus.

He studied them absorbedly. Yes, at the site of the destroyed Inessa was a great stretch of unhabitation on the coast. A city was needed there and the port at the mouth of the river Symæthus was good. How well the god had planned!

Nikander then went to old Akeretos who without delay summoned the Council of the priests.

They met not in the Council House, for the day was warm, but up in the great lesche or colonnade of the Precinct. Greeks never willingly did their thinking away from the open air. Sitting thus on the stone seats, they could look down through the opening of the steep vale to the far-off bit of sapphire loveliness which was the Corinthian Gulf.

Nikander showed them his map.

“Yes,” said Karamanor’s father whose name was Glaucos. “I remember Inessa. Saw it during my travel year. I recall the back country, too. Lovely shaded heights having wide prospect. I could quite see them in memory as I stood there yesterday by the tripod. And even while I was thinking, the Pythia spoke of them, ‘A height where trees invite the birds.’ The oracle was marvellously clear.”

Glaucos looked awestruck, for the god’s message was not always so revealing. The tranced Pythia did not invariably reflect the priestly mind.

“Inessa must be rebuilt,” declared Timon. “Apollo has spoken it, and Apollo is lord of migrations.”

“Yes,” agreed Nikander. “But this poor stammering Hyllos cannot rebuild it. Strange it is that upon such an inefficient person the god should have laid the charge. Within a century past we have not founded so important a city.”

“The god sees that Hyllos cannot do it,” declared a third priest, Melas. “Did you note the oracle yesterday? ‘Of high choice the one who goeth with thee.’ What can that mean but that we are to choose out some real leader, some adequate, big-minded man, to found the city? He must go with Hyllos. Thus shall the oracle be fulfilled.”

“One of high choice refers to Apollo himself,” declared Glaucos. “That was said to encourage Hyllos on the enterprise.”

“That’s the way I understood it,” assented a young priest.

Akeretos brought forth the oracle tablet, and earnestly the priests reread it.

“It means another man to go with Hyllos. Melas is right,” said Nikander. “Why should the priestess refer to Apollo? Of course the god always goes.”

“A leader is of utmost importance,” urged Melas. “The god sees that and gives us the command to find a good one. It’s plain as sunlight.”

“The oracle would be futile otherwise,” put in Timon decisively.

Agreement was soon reached as to the oracle’s meaning and the urgent need of a leader. Then came the all-important choice of a man.

“Shall he be a Delphian?” was the first question.

“Yes, I think so,” said old Akeretos. “Colonies are not often founded these days. It may be years before another goes out. ’Tis a rare chance to strengthen Apollo’s influence in the west.”

“Yes, yes,” chorused the priests. “A Delphian, by all means.”

Nikander’s face suddenly shone. He had wished for many a month to do some service for Karamanor and Agis in return for their honourable treatment of his poor son Lycophron. They were younger sons without means. Here was a chance to make them both rich and prominent.

“I propose Karamanor and Agis, Glaucos’s sons, as leaders of the colony,” said Nikander.

The priests discussed the two young men at length, but in the end rejected both—honest young fellows but not of calibre for this business. Then Dryas was proposed but quickly rejected. Then several other young men of Delphi. It was not easy to find a leader of the peculiar genius needed, fearless yet not quarrelsome, young yet understanding, having the statesman’s uncanny vision to discern the hidden meaning of events and their unlooked-for but inevitable resultants.

During this later discussion Timon had remained quite silent. Evidently he was thinking something through before proposal. Timon’s was the most original mind in the Council, and Nikander awaited his word with pleasure. However, amazement rather than pleasure followed it.

“O priests,” at last said Timon, “has it occurred to you that there have been women who were successful oekists of colonies?”

“Women! what nonsense, Timon. What are you joking about?”

The Council broke into puzzled laughter. For women were a perennial source of satire.

“No, no, I mean it. Did not Dido, the Tyrian, found Carthage and was faithful to the city even unto death?”

“Ay, but Dido was no Greek.”

“No, but Manto was—Manto who founded Clarus. She was a priest’s daughter, a priest of Apollo.”

Suddenly Nikander guessed Timon’s meaning.

It was Theria—none other, whom Timon was about to propose for this high, amazing trust.

But why? How could Timon know that the girl had the needed power—Nikander’s little girl, hidden away in her home, unknown?

For a moment Nikander pictured her thus and trembled to think how his familiar Theria could wield the power of state.

Then with an overwhelming pride he realized that she could! She could do it! What else was the meaning of her trenchant questionings, her revealing suggestions in matters which puzzled himself, her overpowering interest in public affairs in spite of all rebukes, her oracles, by which in the very face of death she had sent courage to the armies?

Yes, yes, Theria could! And the high task would meet and satisfy her mental need.

Ah, but that task would take her away over seas; away, away to the west. Nikander would never see his child again. The very life would be torn out of him to part with her. It was too sudden, too unexpected. He must call aloud to Timon to stop—stop! But no. Did he dare stand in Theria’s way, to deprive her of this gift? Was it not her right, her fate from the gods? Nikander hid his face from the Council. They would never understand this emotion of his—this dependence upon a girl-child.

But what were the priests saying? With quick concern Nikander looked up again.

“It’s not only foolish, Timon; it’s dangerous!” Melas spoke. “Give a woman power like that, she’ll go mad with it.”

Melas was one of those Greeks, a numerous class, who hated women with a curious active hatred which seemed almost bred of fear. They laughed at it all, of course. Why could not babies be found in temples and thus women utterly done away? Wives! what silly, miserable creatures. Hetairai! what undoing of mankind. And behind all the gibing was the curious hating fear. Nikander knew that Melas would not stop short of harming Theria to keep her from being nominated. Keenly Nikander heard the argument.

“I’ve followed you, Timon, in most of your proposals,” said another priest, “but now, by the gods, this is too much! But say, old fellow, you are joking, you know you are.”

“It seems to me you insult all the able young men of Delphi,” said Glaucos.

“What young man have we in Delphi who has seen Apollo face to face?” retorted Timon. “Theria, daughter of Nikander, has been found worthy to behold the god.”

“That’s so, that’s so,” assented some.

“Go fetch her oracle tablets, let’s see what Apollo said to her,” said one.

A messenger was dispatched to the temple.

“And not only has she beheld Apollo,” went on Timon. “But she has spoken for him. Think of those two oracles of hers on the tripod. If it had not been for those oracles, where would Delphi be now? On the Persian side! In disgrace! As it is, men are throwing the earlier oracles of Aristonikè in our face. ‘Persian lovers!’ they call us. ‘Medizers, you Delphians.’ And for my part I have naught to answer but Theria’s oracles. That silences ’em. Salamis and the storm of Artemisium! She foretold them both.”

“Ay, foretold them,” screamed Melas. “But what had she to do with it? It was the god that spoke through her. She was nothing but his mouthpiece.”

“She was more, more I tell you, Melas. She understood those oracles—saw exactly whither they led. She gave them, rejoicing in what they were to accomplish. She——”

“One would think,” interrupted Melas, “from what you say, Timon, that she made them up, and that you knew it!”

“By Zeus, it seemed that way to me. Even at the time I thought so,” said the young priest, his echo.

Ah, they had scented it out! What Nikander had feared—Theria’s strange deception (or was it deception? Nikander himself hardly thought so now). If this question should come up in the Council, what punishment might not fall upon Theria? Who could foresee the end?

Not one trace of this terror, however, showed in Nikander’s face. Your true Greek was on his mettle at such time. He spoke with trumpet anger.

“I will not have my daughter insulted in the Council! If you cannot discuss her honourably, do not discuss her at all. You all know that her oracle trance on the tripod was so real that it nearly killed her. You all know that Apollo spoke afterward to her in the mountain. And you, and you, and you”—turning to the priests—“saw her after her vision. Was ever any vision condition more patent?”

“No, no!” they said. “That vision was true if ever vision was.”

“Then stop this cavilling about my daughter. Either she has the power to conduct the colony or else she has not. That alone is up for your decision.”

Since Salamis, Nikander had been a most powerful figure in the Council, ardently loved, sincerely feared. The lovers spoke first.

“You know your daughter, Nikander. Tell us what you think of her.”

“I think she can do it. Whether I am willing for her to go is another matter. Oh,” Nikander added, “I was as unwilling as you are to acknowledge this power in my daughter. Like you I thought it insulted my sons who should have it in her stead. But hers is the gift of mind. I have been taught that, obstinately fighting. I have been punished until I saw.”

“Punished by herself?” sneered Melas.

“No, by some unrelenting god,” he answered with the love of Theria shining in his eyes.

“Remember,” spoke Timon again. “She has seen Apollo. We want Delphi kept alive in the hearts of her colonists. Could we do better than send one who has beheld the god?”

This argument won.

It was as if Apollo himself were bestowing the leadership upon his ardent young priestess.

Nikander and Timon left the Council together. Each gazed for a moment into the other’s face.

“Well?” said Timon, smiling.

“Well!” said Nikander, still half amazed. “You have let me in for a fine adventure.”

“Aren’t you glad?”

“Yes, I am glad,” responded Nikander, but Timon saw his eyes flush with tears.

“You are very fond of her?”

“Yes, oh, yes. She is closer to me than any other now that I have grown to know her. But,” suddenly lifting his head, “how in Zeus’s name did you guess her, Timon? You never meet her as I do.”

“I did not have to guess. I saw.”

“Saw? What do you mean?”

“Her oracles on the tripod. She did make them, Nikander. I know that. You know it! By Zeus, it was a close shave in the Council.”

The sudden statement was like a thunder-clap. Nikander shook with fear. He seized Timon’s arm.

“You will not accuse her! Timon! She was compelled. She was——”

“No, no. Has not the god himself justified her? Who am I to offer blame? But I saw her do it! And by Zeus, it was the bravest deed, yes, and the most intelligent that I ever saw in my life.”

“Oh,” breathed Nikander.

“At first I could not credit that she was doing it, even though she was pronouncing the oracle as no one had ever pronounced it—driving home its meaning, by Hermes—driving it home! Then I saw the martyr light in her face—the death light, expecting the god’s lightning stroke. Did you note that agonized look just before she fell?

“But she had done the deed. Done the thing that you and I, Nikander, couldn’t bring about with all our toil and effort.”

Nikander was too moved to speak.

“Ever since then,” went on Timon, “the girl’s genius has haunted me. Horrible, you know! Such genius to be wasted even though it be housed in a woman. There!” he ended, laughing. “You have my reasoning.”

Nikander’s gratitude beamed from his face. “The gods bless you,” he said, “for giving the girl her chance.”

CHAPTER XLIII THE BIRD IN THE CAGE

Nikander came hurrying into the house.

“Where is Theria?” he demanded.

Time was when Nikander coming in had invariably asked, “Where is Dryas?” Now it was always, “Where is Theria?” looking about restlessly as though home were not home until Theria appeared.

“Theria? She has gone to bed,” answered her mother.

“To bed! But the sun has not yet set,” said Nikander.

“Yes, but that’s where she is all the same. She said there was nothing more to do in the house so she had better sleep. Of course there is more to do,” complained Melantho. “You’d think she’d take more interest in her bridal spinning. She says there are already more linens and woollens than she can use in twenty years if she had twenty children.”

“Well, aren’t there?” laughed Nikander.

“I should think she would like some more just to put away. But she is so listless.”

Nikander smiled happily.

Listless! Ah, the dear child! She would be listless no longer now that this supreme task had been thrust into her hands. How strangely that had been done, as if the god had done it beyond all human planning. Ah, what a task! The eloquent statements of the afternoon had set the colony glowing in Nikander’s mind. That Theria his child had been chosen leader still filled him with an amazed joy. And Timon’s words! They thrilled back upon Nikander like a triumphal song. He was newly proud, newly tender toward his child who, unaided, had faced death from the god. But Timon had recognized the real power of the girl which had quite escaped the father who loved her. Nikander wondered at this so-common experience. Theria was as good as a son to him now. Had this happened to Lycophron or Dryas could he be any happier than he was at this moment?

He turned impatiently to Melantho.

“Think you she is asleep?” he asked.

“Who, Theria? No, hardly yet. Have you something for her to do?”

“By the gods, yes,” answered Nikander, and strode off like a boy to Theria’s room.

Yes, she was asleep. How strange to see her bright face so quieted. Gods! What a quantity of dark hair she had spreading out over her pillow. What a young child she was, after all.

“Theria,” he said, touching her shoulder.

Her eyes opened wide and alarmed.

“Father, what has happened?”

“Something wonderful, dear child, but you can never guess it. Are you awake enough to understand?”

Theria sat up rubbing her eyes, dizzy from the depths of sleep.

“About Eëtíon?” she murmured.

“No, not your lover. Yourself, yourself. Though, by Hermes, Eëtíon comes into it, too.” Suddenly Nikander found the matter difficult to explain. The girl there on her bed looked so tender, so young! A creature to cherish and protect. Hardly to send over seas to contend with men and fate. He sat down beside her and took her slender hand—that feminine hand so curiously like his own.

“It is a brand-new colony,” he began, “a city that is to be founded or rather refounded in Sicily.”

“Yes; what has that to do with me?” How infinitely far she was from guessing the outcome!

Nikander went back to the beginning, told of Hyllos and his difficult oracle, of the Council, of the proposal of Karamanor and Agis, of Dryas. She grew keenly interested.

“No, no, those could not be leaders, Father. I cannot think of any one who could, any one big enough. Let me see, let me see——”

She looked away, knitting her pretty brows.

“The priests are not in such doubt, Daughter,” said Nikander tenderly. “They have chosen you!”

“Me!” She turned such an amazed face that Nikander had to laugh.

“What on earth do you mean? Why are you joking, Father?”

The same question which Melas had asked.

“I am not joking, dear heart. The priests are in earnest. They chose you because you have seen Apollo. No one in our generation has done that, my child.”

“The vision! How strange. How strange. And the priests chose me, you say? The priests—me!”

Nikander went on explaining as if to dreaming ears. She seemed not to hear him.

“Would Eëtíon go?” she queried.

“Yes, he would help you, but he would not be the leader. That is for you.”

“For me! Oh, Father,” she suddenly cried out. “How could you suppose I could do it? Think of the wisdom, the strength to command men where no laws command them, to know, oh, to know everything for a city’s good. I am not great enough. I am not—not even good enough, Father.”

“But I think you are,” he told her.

She leaned toward him, her lips quivering, very woman, veritable child.

“I would have to go away from Delphi. I would never see Delphi again! I would never see you again! Dear, dear Father, that would be like death!”

He put both arms about her and was not astonished when she began to sob as if from some great shock or strain.

“You will not command me to go,” she pleaded. “Do not command me to go.”

“My dear child! Of course not against your will. But do you not see the honour, the splendour of doing this thing? Of making a city which shall be your own, upon which you can stamp what character you will?”

“I am not great enough to stamp character upon a city. Oh, no, oh, no! Think if I should make some mistake which would harm it, harm the people for perhaps a hundred years. And, oh, I could never think of any city as my city except my Delphi—my Delphi,” she repeated with all the hereditary love, the life-long worship sounding in the word.

Nikander was utterly puzzled.

“Are you only a woman, after all?” he asked.

“Why, yes, Father, what should I be?” she asked with innocent stare.

“Don’t you want your freedom?”

“Freedom! oh, Father, at the price of exile?”

“Exile it is, if you so consider it,” he said. “There, go to sleep again. I don’t believe you are half awake, anyway.”

“Oh, yes, I am, I am awake.”

So he left her. Nikander’s mind was strangely divided between relief and disappointment. Only a woman, after all. Evidently Timon’s heroics were all misplaced. She cared only for home and loved ones. What young man but would have leaped to the task, seen the honour, joyed in the responsibility? And what should he say to the priests? How they would laugh! He could hear Melas’s gibes. Timon would get the brunt of it for proposing her name. Well, after all, they both deserved it for believing such high things of a mere girl.

Yet as Nikander composed himself to sleep he was amazed at his curious sense of relief, an escape out of sorrow. How lovingly she had flung herself into his arms, and what an actual protection he had felt in that love of hers—protection from loneliness, old age ... greyness of life.

Thus strangely did Theria receive the news of her freedom. Like a bird born in a cage, she did not recognize the open door. This amazing proposal had come to Theria at the most sentimental hour of her life, when the bride leaving her old home looks with vivid tenderness upon it. These days the dear old home did not imprison Theria. And the new one! With what intense hope and wonder did that draw her on!

Perhaps she had not been fully awake talking with her father. But surely she was awake now. She began to toss and toss upon her bed. She was a little hurt that her father should so easily plan her departure from Delphi.

“I thought he knew how I loved the Oracle,” she reflected. “But he does not know. Because I am not Dryas, nor Timon—because I am not a man, Father thinks I cannot feel as he does. But I do, I do.”

She sat up in bed, gazing into the dark.

“I have helped Delphi,” she murmured, rather miserably. “At least I thought I had helped Delphi by my oracles. Shall I not love my city that I have helped?”

The miraculous saving of Delphi after days of danger, Theria’s vision on the mountain—all had intensified her already ardent love of home. Even her god Apollo was locally peculiar to his shrine. Gods were never quite the same when worshipped in distant temples. Apollo of Delphi was nearer to Theria than Apollo anywhere else. No, no, how strange of her father to propose her going away. And he wanted her to found a city! The greatness of the task appalled her. She lay back with a sigh.

Inessa! What did the city look like, lying ruined on its distant shore?—“The most beautiful shore in the world,” her father had called it. Apollo himself must love that city since he so insisted upon its rebuilding. A great mountain rose behind it, greater than Parnassos. This also her father had told her. She began again to wonder who could be selected to rebuild it. No doubt the priests had looked over the whole field and found no one. That was why they had chosen her. There could be no other reason for such choosing. Well, they would fall back upon Karamanor. Karamanor had commercial talent. Theria had always heard of that, and how from a little boy he had always got the best of it in every enterprise. Karamanor would make Inessa prosperous, send her ships over farthest waters, and make her rich as Sybaris. Oh, but that was not what the god wanted! There were plenty of rich colonies in the west. No, surely Apollo had some great entity for Inessa. An eidolon she called it, a spiritual ideal or image containing the force and character of the god himself. Beauty rising from it to meet the beauty of the divine mind. Song in abundance fostered, almost worshipped, there. Beauty of dance and of perfectly formed high-hearted youths. Justice, yes, even to the poor who expect no just dealings. And perhaps some new Philosophy which the god had stored in his heart to give to some philosopher yet unborn and who could be born only in this new place of free speech and high ideals, this place untrammelled by old-world mistakes. She thought of Pythagoras, Parmenides. Yes, it was from the west that the philosopher came and awakened the minds of men.

Oh, who could tell what the god of pure, unutterable beauty might do if only the place were prepared? Inessa was a god-appointed place, a god-appointed task. But Karamanor could not do it.

Then? What then?

It was her task. Theria’s! God-given!

She was unworthy, unable! Yes, yes, but the god would help her. Had he not always helped? Ah, out of such difficulties, such despairs, always that hand reached down, always that sudden brightness of mind which was the god’s presence.

She seemed to see Inessa on its shore forlorn, waiting for her!

She leaped from her bed and stood trembling in the darkness. What had she done? She had sent her father away; she had refused! A sentimental, maudlin refusal! Oh, if her father had only shaken her. He was too gentle these days, was Father. She must tell him quickly, quickly. She must tell him she would go.

She felt her way to the door, then hurried along the balcony to her father’s room. He was in the heavy first sleep of night, and when she spoke to him he did not arouse, but only sighed wearily. Melantho sat up. “Are you ill? Is it robbers?” she asked. And learning it was neither she rated Theria in wrathful whispers for disturbing the head of the house.

So Theria perforce went back to her room, there to toss, to plan, to wonder, until nearly dawn when she fell, as with a sudden stumble, into slumber.

When she awoke again the full sun was shining brightly into the court. Inessa, the new wonderful colony, met her awaking mind. She had been walking in its streets of dream with Eëtíon.

But she knew that Nikander always rose with the dawn. Already he might be gone from the house to tell the priests to choose another leader. In mad haste she threw on her chiton and hurried down into the aula. Paian be praised! Nikander was still there, but all dressed and sandalled going toward the door.

“Father, Father!” she cried breathlessly. “Wait a moment. Oh, I must see you alone.”

“What has happened?” he asked.

“Inessa! Oh, Father, I am going to Inessa. I must go.”

“What,” he smiled at her vehemence. “Changeable woman! Do you expect me to veer about with all your moods?”

“I didn’t listen. I was blind. I——”

“But perhaps I, too, have changed mood. I am not nearly so eager as I was last night, my daughter.”

He was not teasing. He meant it! There were longing and affection in his face before which she was utterly silent.

Then he looked into her eyes.

“Does the colony seem more possible this morning?” he asked seriously.

“Possible! Oh, the wonderful task! God-given. Are you sure, sure the priests meant it for me?”

“Quite sure. It was a long, serious discussion.”

“There is no one else,” she said humbly. “That is why they chose me. And that is why I must go. Inessa seems as if it were my own child, lonely, ruined, waiting for me.”

“Hmm—so that is your meaning this morning.”

She began to pace up and down. “Father, it is a thousand-fold task, the founding of a city.”

“I should rather think so,” he smiled.

“Would I have the choice of men who are to go? It should be but a few men at first, and the right men.”

“Yes, the choice would be yours.”

“And the present site of the city. May I choose another? If the old site be unhealthful, or melancholy, or not beautiful, or haunted by some fate?”

“Yes, with the consent of the colonists.”

“And the laws of the city. Would I select the code and even annul laws that proved unsuited in the new land? Oh, Father, you will have to teach me. I will have to work every moment to grow wiser and better.”

“I will teach you,” he responded, wondering at her.

“Think, if we could make a new city where better justice would be meted out than ever before, where even the poor man could keep up heart and courage. And where orphans would be nurtured. Oh, nobody should care for the little fatherless children but me. I would let no one else do that.”

She stopped her pacing and faced him. He was amazed at the change in her—a look of release, of purpose in her face that had never been there before. Seeing her eyes so shining, he realized that always heretofore they had held a bafflement, a look of discouragement and hunger. That look was gone. Now she was strangely creative, maternal onward-moving. The very lift of her head was free. He seemed to see a new Theria.

“Daughter,” Nikander said, “I did not, no, I did not realize it would mean all this to you.”

“Dear Father, dear Father,” she said.

Nikander at once plunged into the further details of the colony. Theria’s enthusiasm was contagious. She listened to him, absorbed. Suddenly she stopped him.

“Of course Eëtíon knows of my leadership? He approves?”

“I did not see him, Daughter. I came hot-foot to you.”

“But Eëtíon should have known it first of all.” Her eyes looked startled, then deep trouble entered into them. “Suppose he does not wish to go?”

“But he will go, Daughter. I am sure he will.”

“I am not sure, not sure,” was her troubled answer. “Eëtíon has been so beaten about the world. He is so pathetically glad to be here at home in Hellas.”

“I’ll make him go,” laughed Nikander.

“Oh, but that is not what I want. No, Eëtíon, too, must be happy. If he were saddened, all the joy would go out of the work; I would lose my luck.”

“Oh, but he’ll go for your sake.”

She seemed not to hear him.

“Father”—she turned to him with sudden pleading—“may I not see Eëtíon? I long to see him now—now. What foolishness to keep us apart. We are betrothed, Eëtíon and I.”

“But I can tell him about the colony.”

“No, no, I must tell him myself. Please, Father, please!”

He could not resist her pleading. He kissed her. “Impetuous daughter,” he called her. But he went forth to find Eëtíon.

CHAPTER XLIV THE METIC

Theria was heroic no longer. She ran to find Baltè.

“Baltè, dress me quick, quick,” she commanded. “No, in my festival dress, the white one with the purple-flowered border. And I want the lovely big necklace, too, with the golden shells and amethysts.”

Theria’s fingers trembled as she helped to fasten the robe.

“Eëtíon is coming,” she whispered. “Oh, he may be here any moment.”

But many moments passed and even hours. Theria went now to the upper window, now down to the door, thinking she had seen Eëtíon on the road, now back into the court.

“Why doesn’t he come?” she said despairingly. “Oh, he is against the colony. Father is trying to persuade him. That is what keeps them. It could be nothing else. Perhaps Eëtíon will not let me go at all.”

Theria had lived so long in half serfdom that she could not, save in certain burning moments, credit her freedom to do this thing. At last Baltè tried to persuade her to eat her breakfast.

“You are famished, darling,” quoth the nurse. “How pale you are. Your lover must not see you so pale.”

But Theria could not eat. She was sitting hopeless at the little table in the court when, with quiet suddenness, the door opened and Eëtíon was there. She rose, trembling, paler than ever. She did not move. Eëtíon ran to her.

“You are ill, darling? Why did you send for me? Ah, Theria, Theria, to see you, to see you!” And he kissed her again and again, so that she had no time to answer.

He had been out hunting, Eëtíon told her. He had returned to find the slave with her message. Oh, why had she given him this unlooked-for joy?

Then brokenly, trying not to plead either in voice or look, Theria told him of the colony and that her father wished to make her oekist—the leader of the colony.

“We must not go unless you wish to go, Eëtíon,” she finished. “It will mean hardships again for you, pioneer life away from your art and the beautiful things that are your very life. It would put you far from Hellas when you have had to wander so many years.”

For his sake she saw Inessa as it really was—a ruin on a desolate shore, a struggle for mere subsistence, a fight with Nature and with human foes.

But Eëtíon noted only one thing.

“You would be oekist?” he asked, amazed.

“Yes, you and I together.”

“They would place that great task in your hands? Would the priests really do that?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Oh,” he broke out. “It is better than anything I ever hoped for you. It is——”

She glanced up at him with such sudden relief that her eyes filled with tears.

“Look here, you little child,” spoke Eëtíon quickly. “What have you been thinking?”

“I thought——” Theria stopped.

“You thought I might take away your gift? That I, your lover, your betrothed, and therefore your lawful master, would snatch your freedom away?”

He took her right hand, holding it against his breast, now bending to kiss it.

“Theria,” he said soberly, “you haven’t begun to understand my love, not even begun to understand it.”

“Do you mean that you really wish me to reach out—to—to find joy in something beyond my home and children—beyond you, you, too?”

Eëtíon paused a moment in a sort of amazed impatience with her.

“Isn’t that what I have been telling you in as many ways as I knew how, ever since I first caught sight of you?” he inquired.

“I didn’t believe you.”

“Do you now?”

She looked, her eyes so deep with gratitude that he caught his breath.

“It will never be beyond you, Eëtíon. My whole life goes to you and there rests.”

“And you gave me my freedom. It’s there that my love rests.”

“But that was so easy to do. Who would not have done it?”

“Nobody but you, Theria. And with what quickness you did it, so spontaneously, so effectively—just you, you! Darling, I would live my life on a frozen coast if that were the only way to give you, too, the gift of freedom.”

“But you must be happy,” she insisted. “Can’t you see I cannot be glad unless——”

“Yes, yes, I am happy,” he interrupted her. “Theria, have you ever thought how humiliating it is to be a metic? In Argos I belonged to an honoured clan. Here in Delphi I am a metic, an alien, nor can I ever be otherwise. In the new city I will be a citizen—the first citizen of all.”

“Eëtíon!” she exclaimed.

He drew her close, speaking low and earnestly:

“And our children will be citizens also. They will inherit. In the new city my sons shall hold up their heads.”

When Nikander came in a half hour later he found the two lovers bending over a pottery tile on which was a map.

Theria leaped up, clapping her hands like a child.

“He will go, he will go,” she cried.

“Did I not tell you that he would?” answered Nikander quietly.

CHAPTER XLV THE MARRIAGE

In the pleasant sunset hour there was great excitement in Delphi village. Men and women of the aristocratic families of the town were all upon the street. Since women were abroad, it could be nothing other than a wedding. Nikander’s daughter to be married! And the circumstances were so unusual that not one relative would miss it. Nikander was marrying her to a foreigner, a strange choice where Delphic youths abounded. But it was said that the choice was the girl’s own, that she loved the young man.

She had managed to see him, and the young man had seen Theria’s face not once, but twice. This, however, was stoutly denied by the nearest of kin. The bridegroom had some wealth. That was a comfort; but he was as peculiar as the girl herself.

The girl had seen Apollo in a vision and was now going to carry the god’s worship over seas to a place where Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant, still lived and might at any time sally forth from some sequestered forest. Where also were men with heads turned backward. This from the women. The men knew better.

So they all gathered to the festive house with laughter, cousinly greetings, and jests. Nikander, richly clad and crowned with myrtle, received them at the door. Ah, there was the bridegroom, too. He was certainly handsome even though no Delphian. His dark head was crowned. He was clad in the crimson purple so dear to the Greeks. And here was Dryas, limping from his honourable wounds and greeting them all in his friendly way. How bright the torches burned in the aula! The smell of roast lamb was wafted from the kitchen to mingle with the odour of rose garlands everywhere. The slaves were bringing in the wine. Would the bride come soon?

In the midst of this worldly clatter the love that was between the pair burned, a thing apart like an altar flame on a still day, clear, unswerving toward the sky.

The ceremonies had begun in the morning when Nikander sacrificed the lamb to Hera Teleia. In the afternoon had come Theria’s maiden cousin bearing a pitcher of pure water from Castalia spring. Theria had received her bridal bath knowing that at the spring itself Eëtíon likewise was being purified.

Theria had been all joy, full of excited laughter, pranks, and dancing. But now her joy swept into an exaltation which kept her still and wistfully kind to all who served her.

As said her own Greek poet:

Toward evening her mother and Baltè dressed Theria in her robes. They draped her beauty in the bridal saffron in which it glowed, they crowned her dark head with myrtle, accenting its symmetry. Then they covered all with the bridal veil and took her below into the torch-lighted aula.

Sorry might those well be who missed the wonder of her hidden eyes.

The guests received her with shouts and laughter. For the wedding was a revel and a romp, the subject of raillery and joke. The women sat at table apart; the men at their feast table. How merrily they laughed when Eëtíon kept glancing away from the board toward his bride and forgot to talk. It was not the bride’s beauty but Eëtíon’s which was remarked by the guests.

So they drank the wine and poured it to the gods, and flung it each in turn from his glass into a whirling cup. Whoever flung without spilling won a prize.

The young couple, in spite of their curious history, made a good impression upon the guests, and several that evening asked to become members of the new colony.

Then in the midst of the kottabus game went up the shout:

“The marriage car at the door!”

Only a moment had Theria to gaze about her at the dear familiar place seen all dimly through her veil. Then her mother took her hand and led her out into the coolness of the night.

There the full round of the marriage-moon made a whiter day. Eëtíon lifted his bride, a slim, swathed figure, into the chariot, then sat at her side. Karamanor, as paranymphos, sat with them.

The procession started, Melantho behind the chariot carrying the marriage torches whose ruddy burning sent aloft the mystic smoke. Out from the house into the silvery radiance of the moon-lit road poured forth the youths and maidens, singing, shouting:

“Ho Hymen! Hymen Hymenæos. Io!”

Up the Delphi highroad they danced toward the little house beyond the Precinct, which Nikander had given to the pair. A mad and merry rout, they followed the jolting car. One played the sounding pipes, and behind him a boy clashed aloft the thin, glittering cymbals. In a burst of joyous music they stopped at the bridegroom’s door.

There stood Baltè with torches to receive them. Eëtíon’s mother should have been the one to hold that welcoming torch. No doubt she guessed this in her dark house of Hades and wept with tearless eyes to be near her son upon his marriage night.

Now Eëtíon lifts his bride from the chariot, carries her carefully over the high threshold that no stumble of her foot may bring ill luck. And they go into the marriage chamber. The door is shut and Eëtíon with reverent hand lifts the bridal veil to behold at last the wondering, half-frightened, yet happy face for which he has longed these many days.

Soberly he gives to her the quince, symbolic food of those who are to be the mothers of men. Her hands, as she eats, tangle in the long enmeshing veil, and with a quick breath Eëtíon sweeps it off upon the floor. Her comely head is liberate, her shoulders and arms free.

Suddenly he catches her away from ritual into a high shining reality. He folds her in his arms, kissing her forehead and mouth.

“Oh, be free,” he whispers. “Your hands to act, your eyes to see, my Theria, giver of my freedom.”

Meanwhile, the guests outside the closed door make merry, chanting the epithalamion, calling rudely to the bridal pair as the ancient custom is, but they—they hear it not.

CHAPTER XLVI THE DOOR OF ESCAPE

Then followed a busy, happy winter. All the months must be passed in making ready the colony which was to start with the early navigation of the spring. Eëtíon journeyed to his old home in Argos, and found there, as he had expected, certain citizens who were faithful to Hellas and secretly grieving over Argos’s faithless stand in the war.

Xerxes, the Persian king, was gone from Greece. But a formidable army of Persians yet lingered in Greece. Before these were vanquished fighting was yet to be—and these few Argive men were horrified at the prospect of fighting against their own. They returned with Eëtíon to Delphi. Theria tested these men, shrewdly asking them questions, watching their faces. Eëtíon, spite of experience, was a less keen judge than she. From wrong premises she was continually drawing right conclusions. After trying to help her Eëtíon gave up, laughing. The feminine way was new.

In Delphi itself, Karamanor and Agis and a number of other kinsmen were glad to go. Those who were not married took brides forthwith. The new generation in the colony would have a strong Delphic stamp. Here was more business for the œkist, for not a bride among them wanted to go. Theria visited from one to the other, picturing the new life, persuading them.

“No one in the colony shall be homesick if I can help it,” she told them. And remembering her own first reluctance to go, she could not be hard upon their timidity. Theria had never known girl-friends, but in these earnest conferences she acquired them. One little wife in particular—a girl of fourteen years, delicate, pale, whose father had been very severe and whose husband was now taking his turn at severity—Theria took to her heart with great tenderness. She was herself astonished at the way the little creature bloomed and grew strong under the new encouragement.

And now Theria must receive the grain to be laden in the ships, grain both for food and for planting. Theria tended the tiny grape-vines and treasured the seeds of useful herbs and vegetables to be carried over seas. No seeds of flowers, for the Greeks did not plant them. Besides, were not the slopes and capes of Sicily one far-flung flowerland?

As for Nikander, the days were not long enough for him to teach his daughter all she now must know: the Delphic laws, the modes of city government, precautions for city health, religious customs in which she must be vigilant and exacting. Her hungry learning brought tears to Nikander’s eyes. But often these were tears of pride for the quickness of her mind, her strong opinion so intimately his own, her quick refusal of wrong methods or shallow reasoning.

But it was perhaps Melantho who in these days noted the greatest change in Theria. Theria had always been haughty toward her mother, disobedient, and sharp of answer.

Melantho’s commonplaceness, her willingness for the jog-trot woman’s life exasperated her daughter; and when Melantho had tried to make the daughter keep to the same dull pace there had arisen quarrels and bitterness.

But in these days of free outlet Theria grew gentle toward her mother. Affectionate, though a little condescending withal as daughters are apt to be. Then while Theria was yet unaware the affection grew into respect for the stubby little figure that went pottering around the house making content out of such meagre materials. Homespuns, tapestries, embroidered things—these were Melantho’s joy. These like the gay patch-work quilts of a later day were the spirit-outlets for a housed woman.

One day timidly she brought forth to her daughter a balcony hanging—a gorgeous thing. The little human figures wrought upon it told an ancient legend lost save that this ancient woven design preserved it to memory and men’s eyes. The little men and women were archaic, almost grotesque, but perfect in decorative value. For in Hellas even such delicate, perishable things took on the inevitable beauty which flowed from Greek souls through their fingers.

Melantho spread it before Theria on a table.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“It is beautiful—beautiful,” said Theria, passing a caressing hand over the deep reds and gorgeous peacock-blues. “Do you know, Mother, whenever this was hung from the balcony when I was a little child I used to shout and prance with joy. Many a time you punished me and did not know why I was noisy.”

Melantho looked down.

“How strange,” she said. “It always makes me feel that way, too.”

“You, Mother! You!”

“Of course,” corrected Melantho, “I never did it. I never pranced.”

Theria laughed a thrill of affectionate laughter. “I wish you had,” she declared.

“I was wondering,” said Melantho, hesitating, “if you would not take this with you to your new home.”

“I wouldn’t think of taking it,” said Theria. “It is too precious. And it belongs here in the dear old home where it has always been.”

“Yes,” said Melantho. “The ship will be crowded with useful things which you really need.”

Something in Melantho’s face, as she gathered the folds together, caught Theria.

“Mother! Do you really want me to take it? You are willing to part with it?” she exclaimed.

Melantho paused in her timid way.

“You dear Mother,” said Theria, shaking her mother’s shoulders in affectionate protest. “Don’t you suppose I’d rather have it than a hundred merely useful things? I hated to be selfish.”

Melantho’s face shone. “I have so many more.”

“But none so glorious as this one, Mother. Oh, at first, when I have only a little hut, and hang this in it, it will be home. And, Mother, I’ll feel, when my babies are born and see this, that they will be seeing something that is really Delphi!—Delphi!”

“Perhaps other children,” ventured Melantho, “other children of the colony will see it, too. The town will be so poor and bare at first. Nothing beautiful, nothing——” Melantho was quite unresigned to Theria’s going, could see no possible reason for it.

“Yes,” Theria conceded. “It will be all of that, huts and mere shelters at first. But it will never look like that to me.”

“Yes, but the children who are too little to remember Delphi,” objected Melantho. “How will it look to them?”

“I will bring them to see this. Yes, I will. Until our temples are built and my dear Eëtíon makes statues of gods and men. Only think, Mother, it will be your gift—the gift of your fingers—which will keep alive our heritage of beauty, until the town brings it to life again in itself.”

Many a long hour did Nikander, Eëtíon, and Theria together study the maps of the western colonies.

“You see,” said Nikander one day, “by this map how near Inessa lies to her unkind neighbour, Catana. That is a problem for you, Theria, for you also, Eëtíon.”

But Eëtíon was studying the map with knitted brows.

“I wish it showed whether marble is found there,” he said. “Do you suppose Syracuse would furnish bronze?”

Nikander clapped him on the shoulder, laughing.

“Oh, incorrigible sculptor, what did you promise me?” he asked.

Eëtíon blushed like a boy. “In the new city,” he pleaded, “surely my fault will be overlooked.”

“As leader in the new city,” responded Nikander, “you should set an example to all.”

“Isn’t that rather an undertaking, Nikander?” sighed the rueful artist.

But Theria took Eëtíon’s brown, skilful hand in hers.

“Nay, Father,” she said defensively. “Deny him not. He is a born sculptor, his gift is from the gods. We cannot stop it. As for me, I have been inquiring among the colonists. I have found several bronze workers, and workers of marble. These shall be Eëtíon’s helpers.”

CHAPTER XLVII ALIEN MEADOWS

In the early spring six good ships rode at anchor in the harbour of Kirrha. They were the small craft of that day. Hardy the folk who would put to sea in them.

In Delphi the good-byes were earnest and tearful. Many were the anxious sacrifices paid for the safe voyaging, many the omens taken, peering into the future. It is said that in those days more than a third of all navigation went to the bottom. It was a far journey. The smallness and slowness of the craft multiplied the distance a hundred-fold.

At last one bright spring morning Eëtíon and Theria, hand in hand, and the little band of colonists following them, started down the hill road toward Kirrha. Melantho could not bring herself to go to the port, could not bear to see her daughter actually lose herself upon the sea. But Nikander walked wordless beside his daughter.

Here was Theria’s first viewing of the sea, a small stretch of intense blue far on the horizon between the hills. In the journey down from Delphi the dreamy hills unfold and stand aside in delicate succession until all the violet Gulf of Corinth is open to the view. Eëtíon quietly put aside Theria’s veil as the first glimpse of it opened.

“The sea!” he said with that love in his voice that every Greek understood.

The little company passed slowly down the steep olive grove and came at last to the small port of Kirrha.

Ah, how impatient the bright ships pull at their anchors—birds impatient to be gone! Bright they are as birds in their plumage—red and peacock-blue. The grotesque prows dance as if alive. One prow is a boar, another a goose, another a huge bird, all dipping in the waves. At the hawse holes of each ship are two bright orange-coloured eyes—how else can they see their way across the misty deep? Four are merchant vessels, the so-called “round ships,” built for cargo and for steady going. These have a single oblong sail and eight or ten long sweeps to help the windless days or days of contrary winds.

The other two ships are triremes, necessary for defense in those western waters where pirates are to be dealt with. These long narrow ships, with three tiers of oars either side and a sharp beak, are built for war. Indeed, one of them has fought in the battle of Salamis, an actual helper in the freedom of Greece and well-nigh sacred. Theria, Eëtíon, and their kinsfolk are to go in her.

Nikander kisses his daughter and weeps like a child now in this last moment of good-bye. Theria clings to him in the sharpest sorrow she has ever known.

With laughter and tears the colonists set forth in tiny rowboats and climb aboard. Theria as œkist, a figure of white fluttering garments, standing on the deck of her ship, lights the incense upon the little altar there. The oarmasters lift their hands as one would start a chorus, the flute player begins to play a wild, rhythmic tune. Now a shout! and the three tiers of oars either side the ship lift—grating, groaning, creaking—a mighty noise. Then all together, like huge powerful wings, they smite down upon the water which whitens into spray.

Forth springs the trireme like a hound, half lost in its own glittering spume. Up go the yellow sails of the round boats. A cry of love and longing goes up from the dear ones ashore, and the colonists are off!

All that day the little fleet coasted along the Gulf of Corinth, one of the most picturesque inland waters in the world. At night they drew up their ships upon the shore and slept under the stars. Sunrise saw them off again, the round boats using their long sweeps in that still, golden hour.

All the way, as was the Greek fashion, they hugged the shore along Ætolia, Akarnania, Epeiros, keeping within the islands for safety, arriving at Corcyra, that western outlook-isle of Greece, the fourth day.

From Corcyra they made the bold voyage across the Ionian Sea to Italy.

Theria’s mind, so cultivated yet unspoiled, so educated yet starved, viewed all things with an eagerness usual to a child of seven. Partly her cloistering had done this, partly it was a racial characteristic. The Hellene was always young, and in this the Nikander family were true Hellenes.

Day after day she stood at the prow, never tiring of the broad and changing sea, of the islands, white peaked or lying like brazen shields on the glancing deep, of the dolphins that played about the ship—symbols of her god—of the rise of the moon like a full-opened lonely flower above the waste of waters. She asked questions of Eëtíon constantly like a child, and who so glad as he to answer? Eëtíon was her Odysseus who knew all the wonders of travel, its dangers and its joys.

In the Gulf of Tarentum they met storms which drove the fleet apart. One of the ships was lost and Theria wept for it as for close kindred. They reached Italy, coasted down to the point of it, sighted Sicily the great Isle of Snowy Peaks and came at evening, as is the wondrous way of ships, into the tiny bay of their desire.

It was Eëtíon and Theria who stepped down first from the galley and waded through the shallows to the shore. Together they stooped and kissed the alien land which was to become their own. In spite of all their cultivation, they were not farther from the soil than the hidden creatures of wood and field.

Then the ships were beached. What sound is so exquisite of far meaning as this grating of a glad prow upon new sands? The Greeks climbed the shore talking eagerly, laughing, looking about them as only new emigrants look, with hope of future generations in their eyes.

Karamanor and Agis, as priests of Apollo, builded an altar, scattered barley and poured wine, lighting the fire with the sacred flames which they had brought from Delphi and had carefully guarded all the voyage through. But this done, Theria made them hide their fire for fear of being seen. Their foe, alas, was no Sicilian, but the Greek town Catana which flourished farther up the coast. So they ate a frugal supper and wearily, thankfully, slept on the lonely sand.

Next morning, before sunrise, Theria awoke and spoke to Eëtíon.

“Come,” she whispered. “Let us go into the land and see what we may see.”

“We must leave Karamanor in charge,” answered Eëtíon. “They must not think us lost.”

This matter accomplished, they stole hand in hand out of the sleeping camp and up the overgrown paths toward the ruined town. The enemy had done his work well. The town was a pitiful sight. Greek, and ruined by Greeks.

They passed beyond the town into the upland meadows where carpets of anemones—purple, white, and pink—reminded them that here the maid Persephone had gathered flowers what time the dark steeds of Hades and his yet darker chariot came rattling down upon her. The place seemed utterly deserted. All distances were hid in mists. The dews and high grasses drenched them to the knees. Theria had to kirtle her dress as she had done in the glen at home. But with this freedom her spirit rose. She began to go more eagerly, leaping along the way, clapping her hands at each new stretch of bloom, breaking into snatches of old Delphic song. Eëtíon began almost to fear that she was too much a child, that no responsibility had really touched her.

“Ah, well,” he thought tenderly, “I can take the care. After all, her years are child years only.”

They began to climb the hills and into a brightening world. Now turning they could see the beach with its faint dark patch where was their camp. But the ships were hid in the little river which here emptied into the sea.

Full morning now. They came to a pleasant hill. It jutted out like a headland into a fertile, untilled vale. A forest of cypress and wild olive crowned the hill, and the shade received them with a sense of rest.

But Theria did not rest. She began to explore. And in a depression of the hillside she came upon a full flowing spring. With a hasty invocation she knelt to drink and as she did so, the birds flew up in flocks with a whir of wings.

Instantly she recalled the oracle which had been given to the Sicilian youth, Hyllos.

“Eëtíon, Eëtíon,” she called, and as he and the slave came running:

“Oh, I have found the site of our city, truly, I think I have found it!”

Reverently they drank of the spring. How unbelievably sweet after the stale water of the ship.

“It tastes like our own Castalia water,” she said.

“Oh, Mistress, it is Castaly,” spoke the Delphic slave. “I’d know Castalia water anywhere. The dear nymph has come under the sea to greet us here.” And Theria believed him.

“Eëtíon, come, look! Is not the hill defensible from every side? Is not the plain near enough for tillage? You know so much better than I. Is it not better to be here hidden among the hills than down on the shore where the enemy will find us too soon?”

She was serious (no laughter now) and sharp as a hawk.

“Yes, yes,” said Eëtíon. Busily, carefully they searched the place.

Then they halted as if at some command.

The mist had been drawing off, and suddenly borne upon the clouds the glorious snowy crest of Ætna stood in the sky, its white steam floating from it as if it itself would float away into nothingness.

Then far below the rugged coast-line trembled into view and all the blue sea.

Theria closed her eyes at the pain of the too-great beauty.

“The gods have spoken,” said Eëtíon softly. “We will go back and tell our people. We have found the site of our city.”

CHAPTER XLVIII TOWN MAKERS

How eagerly the colonists heard the story. How impatiently they hurried up to the place themselves.

Some were at first not satisfied with the site—those who had always lived directly upon the seashore. But in the council which met under the trees the Delphian mountain dwellers prevailed.

Next day all began to carry their goods to Theria’s hill and started their work.

First must come the wall. All laboured at this, slave and free; for the thing was of moment. Huts and shelters of branches must serve the people for this first while.

Then the temple of Apollo was begun at once and of marble. In this work Eëtíon was perfectly happy. He it was who selected the temple-site. With true Greek instinct he made the temple the focus of the landscape, the place toward which everything centred, hill and vale and reverent climbing path.

It was Eëtíon who later modelled the sculptures of the pediment and the bronze image of the youthful Apollo which was to stand within.

Indeed the town was a place of youth. No grey heads anywhere, no blasted hopes nor pent-up desires. And when these are absent no one can believe that they ever will come!

So well did the sequestered situation serve them that their enemy, the Catanan neighbours, found them not until months had passed. And when they did find them, the new colonists drove them off in a quick fight.

Theria’s hours were full. Those hours which at home used to drag in hated vacancy. The colonists themselves were Theria’s constant care. To one she gave ardent praise, to another, merited rebuke.

The choosing of laws, the unexpected setting aside of old laws which in this new land were found to be ill-fitted, the keeping of the council high purposed and pure. These were her duties. Theria did not sit with the council, but her advice was paramount. As former priestess of Apollo and seer of a vision, she exercised a power which as mere woman she could never have attained.

And strangely enough, her poet quality did not suffer in this public activity, but, as is frequent with the Greek, rather thrived and flowered in it.

Late in the winter her first child was born. The colonists thought it was misfortune that the child should be a girl. But Eëtíon took this dispensation of the gods with good heart. He lifted the darling creature in his arms, gazing into the tiny face which, from its first hour, knew how to smile.

Then, smiling himself, he draped the little thing in a long, old-fashioned string of pearls and laid her softly beside her mother.

“But what is this?” asked Theria. “In what strange fashion have you decked my child?”

He laughed with happiness. “Do you not recognize them, dear Theria? The jewels of my freedom which your eldest daughter must wear. Did I not purchase them from Apollo and bring them over seas in hope of her?”

And Theria realized how Eëtíon loved his little girl.

In the second spring came a shipload of Athenians to join the colony. They gave the town a new impress from the first moment of arrival. For who should arrive with them but Nikander himself.

Theria was sitting crooning happily to her child when he stepped over her high threshold as casually and unannounced as though he had come from next door. Theria came near fainting at such unlooked-for joy. Absence in those days was deathlike in its completeness and disconnection. It seemed to Theria as though her dear father had come from the dead.

Then with what happy tears and soft laughter did she lift up the baby Theria to show him. With what pride did she lead her father out into her town.

Eëtíon met them at the doorway. Then with what seriousness and pride did the two lead Nikander about the new streets, to the market place, to their pure Castalian spring, to their Akropolis. Here was the temple, Eëtíon’s own. It stood unfinished, without cella or roof, with distant Ætna and the violet horizon of sea glimpsing between the white new columns. It seemed a spirit thing, not yet quite of this earth. Indeed it was never to be other than a heavenly, unbelievable beauty.

In Eëtíon’s workshop stood his clay Apollo watching as with wistful, marvelling eyes while the craftsmen brought him to life in bronze. Beside it was another model at sight of which Nikander exclaimed aloud with pleasure.

“It is a Victory,” explained Eëtíon, “which I made after our battle with the Catanans.”

It was a slender elastic figure, winged, the accepted victory form. Like the Ladas model she was moving strongly forward, moving as it seemed into the wind which swept back her long draperies in lovely, free, yet simple lines. She held her victory trumpet but had forgotten to sound it. Her dreamy face seemed looking through some parting of the mists and she was walking straight into her vision. She had forgotten present victory in victories to be. The figure, the countenance, the clean-shaped, filleted head were Theria’s own.

“How did you ever capture her?” cried Nikander. “The very spirit of my Theria.”

“She stood so at the prow of the ship,” said Eëtíon happily. “Day after day, questioning, questioning always and so full of joy. I did not put my hand to the clay until she was complete in my mind.”

“Ah,” laughed Theria, “so that is the reason you looked at me so strangely and sometimes did not answer me. I thought it was because you loved me.”

“And was it not?” Eëtíon retorted, kissing her.

“This statue,” said Nikander, “shall be put at once into marble. And I require it as your first city-gift to Delphi.”

Centuries afterward a sculptor of the Island of Samothrace turned to this pure statue of the earlier day for the type of his Winged Victory. In his later hands the draperies were more boisterous in the breeze, the figure more robust, the skill of handling more complete. But he never caught the far, sweet dreaminess of the face which Eëtíon knew.

Nikander’s visit to the colony gave the citizens great courage and conviction. His praise was ardent, his criticism unsparing. Thus no doubt many a time had men of the mother city helped and inspired the little cities beyond the misty deep. Communication between Delphi and the colonies was astonishingly constant.

As years went by Eëtíon and Theria journeyed back and forth over the sea carrying the city gifts to Delphi, bringing back Delphi’s encouragement and advice.

Upon these journeys they took their children, the glorious children of whom Nikander had prophesied long before. During the first of these journeys, Theria longed with almost painful intensity for the arrival in Delphi. But once there, though she loved her “Place of Golden Tripods” more deeply than ever, she chafed at old restrictions, and, the sojourn over, she turned her face toward her western home feeling that it was home indeed.

In this western home life was simple but very rich. From here the young victors went forth to the Pythian and Olympic games. It was of such western boys mainly that Pindar sang. Many such a boy was brought back to the little mountain place by his townsmen and celebrated almost as a god. Of these, three in succession were Theria’s own sons. It was easy to worship such youths not merely for their strength and outward beauty, but for their nimble wit and their delicate, fine-trained imagination. They were gentle seeming but strong as tempered steel.

In this little hill town of Inessa poets and hymn makers were born, and one of those early scientists who amaze us by what they fathomed without instruments or scientific gear. Several young philosophers who were claimed as being from the more famous towns and schools were here born and bred.

The city flourished. Its modesty kept it for many years from being drawn into the terrible wars which wrecked Sicily. It tilled the fertile plain below its Akropolis, and rebuilt the old town on the shore for a port. But farther than this it did not go. Theria and her colonists had the Delphic tradition which was neither conquest nor dominion, but an intensive perfecting of the life within the town.

And after the passing of the original builders, the town was, for many generations, the same.

For it is curiously true that a town will retain for hundreds of years the spirit of its founders. Men may flock in and overwhelm it in numbers, but the original subtile spirit, be it good or bad, absorbs the newcomers. In this lies the immortal glory of the pioneer.

All is silent now. The hillock lies as ever beholding the infinite glory of the smoking mountain, the violet vivid sea, the far-flung island coast where headland after headland sweeps outward in majestic successive distances, and between are sheltered bays, sickle-shaped, untenanted and pure.

Anemones and violets nod in the sea winds growing in the very cella of the temple. Sheep polish the marble pillars with their fleeces as they pass, or leave white woolly wisps upon the brambles in the market place for birds to gather for their nests.

But who knows whether the godlike young Sicilians who here still tend their flocks may not show us, shadowed and dulled with ignorance, some gesture of Eëtíon’s beauty, some glow of Eleutheria’s grace?

THE END