h and station, were drinking the health of
the betrothed pair from cups which each had cost ten times its weight in
gold; that wrestlers, brought from the arena at Uriconium, were striving
with sweat and strain for the purse of twenty sestertii offered to the
winner; and dancing girls from far Arabia were posing to the plaintive
wail of reeds and the thin tinkle of cymbals. But of all this the rear
courts knew nothing. Here was only hurrying to and fro of jaded slaves
laden with amphorae of wine and oil and honey; the smell of roasting
meats, the clash of pots and kettles. Here, behind the scenes, were the
ropes and pulleys which set the stage that the actors might strut
through their lordly parts; here was no relaxation and luxurious ease,
but labor stern and unremitting, since always pleasure must be paid for
by toil.

But Wardo, on his special mission, was exempt from menial tasks. He
descended the steps, from level to level, in a stone-bound stillness,
the nails in his sandals striking at times faint sparks of light from
the uneven flagging he trod. Near the door of Nicanor's cell he paused.

His light, flung upon rough-hewn walls, showed down three steps the
grated doors of the wine-cellars. Away to his right, down a narrow
pitch-black tunnel, were the walls of the hypocausts behind which fires
roared and ravened. Through these tunnels, in Summer, the furnaces were
approached to be repaired and cleaned.

"If the light fall upon him too suddenly, it may blind him," said Wardo.
"And perhaps he sleeps. I will go softly and make sure."

He thrust his torch into an iron socket in the wall, and went to the
door of Nicanor's prison hole. Here he felt with stealthy hands for the
small wicket, to be shut or opened only from the outside, built in every
cell-door that a warder might hear or see what his prisoner did within.
This he pushed back an inch, carefully, without noise, and bent his ear
to the opening.

So he heard a voice issuing out of the eternal darkness within; a voice
steady and resonant, and sustained as though it had been speaking for
some time. Out of the darkness it reached his ears as a thing
disembodied, seeming scarcely of the earth or of human lips. In it was a
thrill born of the pure joy of creation; prisoned, it yet was free with
a freedom whose limits were the limits of earth and sky and thought,
unchained, recking not of dripping walls nor aching darkness, for these
things were nothing.

"Out