"My thanks. I shall need your help, Captain, in all ways, for though I have donned the King's livery, you Greeks look on me as a Jew. I am like to fall between the upper and nether millstones. My people have cast me off, and, by Hercules! yours do not take to me as they should."
"Never fear, Glaucon," replied Dion. "A man who can swear 'By Hercules!' instead of 'As the Lord liveth!' will soon have the favor of our gods."
"And goddesses, too, I hope," laughed Glaucon. "But I have not thanked you, Dion, for saving my father from his crazy venture on the streets yesterday. The shade of Anchises bless you for that!"
"Well up in the poets, too, I see," said the Captain, slapping his comrade on the back. "Your brain is Greek if your blood be Hebrew. But let us hear what this blabber is saying."
The men stood a moment listening to an orator who, with well-oiled locks and classically arranged toga, was addressing a small group within a portico. He was just saying: "Hear then the words of the divine Plato, 'When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful body, and the two are cast into the same mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him that has an eye to contemplate the vision.' Truly the soul is made fair by the fairness of the body. Thought glows when the eye sparkles. Heroism is bred of conscious strength of muscle. Love burns within the arms of beauty, and with the kisses scented with the sweet breath of health. Think you that the gods would dwell within the statues if the sculptors did not shape the marble and ivory to exquisite proportions?
"Behold, then, the stupidity of these Jews whose foul nests we are destroying. They read their Rolls, but they gain no wisdom. They pray, yet remain impious. It is because they know not the first of maxims, namely, that the body is the matrix of the mind."
"The fool!" was Dion's comment. "There are better declaimers in any Greek village. And"—more to himself than to his comrade, as a band of Jews, among them even some renegade priests, stripped naked, ran by them on their way to the racing stadium—"yet see, there are bigger fools!"
When the two men passed into the gymnasium proper, the crowd on the benches raised the cry of "Dion! Dion!" until the crossbeam shook down its dust of applause.
The Captain gracefully acknowledged the compliment by taking from his brow the chaplet, now well withered, and flinging it from him into the crowd with the exclamation: "I will win it again before I wear it."
The magnanimous challenge brought the champion another ovation.
The chief gymnasiarch approached, and read from his tablets the names of the day's victors in the various contests that had already taken place. He bade Dion select an antagonist from the list.
"I will throw the discus," said the Captain.
"Then your competitor will be Yusef, the Lebanon giant," read the gymnasiarch. He shouted:
"Hear ye! Yusef of Damascus is challenged by Dion of Philippi."
Divesting himself of his garment the Greek now stood naked among his compeers.
"Adonis has descended," shouted one, in a tone that might have been taken for either admiration or contempt.
An alipta came and rubbed Dion's arms and back with oil mingled with dust.
"Better rub him against the Jew. He'll get both grease and dirt at a touch," sneered some one.
Dion turned, and, fronting the group whence the insult came, scanned the faces one by one; but there was no response to his mute challenge.
As he moved away one ventured to say, loud enough to be heard by a few about him:
"The Jewish renegade is protected by special order of the King, or, by the club of Herakles! I would grind his face with my fists."
"The Captain seems to be the pimp's special body-guard just now," was a reply; after which the knot of men talked in low tones among themselves, casting furtive glances in the direction of Dion.
"Yusef stands on his record of this morning," shouted the gymnasiarch. "He need not throw again unless Dion shall pass him."
The Greek balanced in his hand two circular pieces of bronze, in order to select one of them. The crowd densely lined the way the missile was to fly. There was eager rivalry for places at the goal end, where the friends of the contestants craned their necks to see the exact spot the discus would strike, ready to applaud or dispute it. In this group Glaucon had secured a foremost stand, and waited, leaning with the crowd.
"Here's your chance to stick the pig of a Jew," whispered one to his neighbor, who stood just behind Glaucon.
Dion held the bright bronze in his right hand, his fingers grasping tightly the outer rim, while the weight fell upon his open palm and wrist. Raising his left arm the more perfectly to balance his weight, he pivoted himself upon his left foot, then, swinging the discus backward in almost a complete circle, and combining the muscles of arm and trunk and leg in one tremendous return motion, he flung the metal gleaming through the air.
At the same instant Glaucon was thrust by those behind him headlong into the path of the flying missile. The swift swirl of the disc together with its weight made its impact as dangerous as that of a sword blade. It struck the falling form of Glaucon, terribly bruising the base of his head, and laying open a ghastly wound in his neck and shoulder.
Dion strode down the line. He glanced an instant at the prostrate form of his friend, turned as quickly as a bear, seized two of the throng of bystanders, dashed their heads together until they were half-stunned, then flung them sprawling apart. They lay moaning and cursing on the ground amid the derisions of the crowd until the gymnasiarch ordered them under arrest.
The gymnastæ, or surgeons of the field of sports, were summoned; but the case of Glaucon was beyond the present need of their splints and unguents.
Dion bade them carry the apparently lifeless form to Elkiah's house, and himself led the way. It was this sad company which the clairvoyant mind of the blind boy detected before the searching gaze of Deborah saw the approaching litter.
V
A FLOWER IN A TORRENT
It is Benjamin! Benjamin is hurt!" cried Caleb, leaning an instant over the parapet. While Deborah was looking into the street he felt his way to the steps leading down from the roof into the open court around which the house was built. He darted across this as quickly and silently as a flash from the brass mirror, not even waking Ephraim, the servant, who had fallen asleep watching the ripples in the great basin of the fountain that stood in the centre of the court. In another instant the boy had raised the crossbar from the lintels and was hasting down the narrow street. Extending his hands he guided himself through the crowds, keeping always in the centre of the way as infallibly as a stick floats in the middle of a wild rushing torrent. In vain did Deborah, as she saw him, call him from the parapet. She flew down the stone stairway and out into the street.
"What haste, my black-eyed beauty?" said an impudent soldier, blocking her way.
By a quick movement Deborah eluded
