asons
for submitting to his fate suggested themselves unbidden--reasons more
worthy of his position, of the whole course and aim of his thoughts, and
of the sorrow which weighed upon his soul. It beseemed him as a skeptic
to endure the worst with equanimity; under all circumstances he liked
to be in the right, and he would fain have called out to his sister that
the cruel powers whose enmity he had incurred still persisted in driving
him on to despair and death, worthy as he was of a better fate.

A few minutes later Zminis came in, and put out his long lean arms to
apprehend him in Caesar's name. Philip submitted, and not a muscle of
his face moved. Once, indeed, a smile lighted it up, as he reflected
that they would hardly have carried him off to prison if Alexander were
already in their power; but the smile gave way only too soon to gloomy
gravity when Zminis informed him that his brother, the traitor, had just
given himself up to the chief of the night-watch, and was now safe under
lock and ward. But his crime was so great that, according to the law of
Egypt, his nearest relations were to be seized and punished with him.
Only his sister was now missing, but they would know how to find her.

"Possibly," Philip replied, coldly. "As justice is blind, Injustice has
no doubt all the sharper eyes."

"Well said," laughed the Egyptian. "A pinch of the salt which they give
you at the Museum with your porridge--for nothing."

Argutis had witnessed this scene; and when, half an hour later,
the men-at-arms had left the house without discovering Melissa's
hiding-place, he informed her that Alexander had, as they feared, given
himself up of his own free-will to procure Heron's release; but the
villains had kept the son, without liberating the father. Both were
now in prison, loaded with chains. The slave had ended his tale some
minutes, and Melissa still stood, pale and tearless, gazing on the
ground as though she were turned to stone; but suddenly she shivered, as
if with the chill of fever, and looked up, out through the windows into
the garden, now dim in the twilight. The sun had set, night was falling,
and again the words of the Christian preacher recurred to her mind: "The
fullness of the time is come."

To her and hers a portion of life had come to an end, and a new one must
grow out of it. Should the free-born race of Heron perish in captivity
and death?

The evening star blazed out on the distant horizon, seeming t