l air
flooded him, and he raised his head and breathed it deeply. For eight
long months his lips had panted for it. As he had foreseen, the court
was deserted; all the household slaves were busy in this way and that
about the feast. He cast a calculating glance upward at the crescent
moon, struggling through banking clouds.

"Till she touches the top of the stunted lime," he muttered, and crossed
the court with his long noiseless stride.

A distant strain of music wandered out across the night; and at all it
whispered of that which was not for him he set his teeth with a
smothered groan. Past silent courts he went, avoiding the teeming
kitchens, and through narrow passages and empty rooms. A slave boy with
a trayful of broken meats passed him where he hung concealed in the deep
shadow of one court. He made a motion forward, his hungry eyes gleaming;
drew back in silence and let the boy pass on. It was many hours since
he had tasted food, but he dared not risk betrayal.

So he gained a certain small doorway in one of the lesser courts, a deep
recess, merely, in the wall, which led to no room. Just inside it steep
steps showed in the moonlight, leading upward. Nicanor listened a moment
to make certain that all was still, and, as one sure of himself and what
he meant to do, ran up them,--past where a landing opened on the stairs,
with glimpses of a pillared gallery beyond; and still up, until the
flight ended in a long and bare passage. Here it was very dark, with
only the moonlight coming through narrow windows of thick and muddy
glass. Nicanor looked about him as one who would know if all was as he
had left it last. A ladder lay upon the floor beneath the square of an
opening in the roof. This he leaned against the wall, mounted it, and
slid back the hatch, which ran in wooden grooves. The ladder creaked
beneath him as he swung his long body forward and gripped the edges of
the opening. Until he had made sure of his hold he did not leave the
ladder; then swung clear, shifting his hands one by one into better
position, and raised himself slowly, by sheer practised strength of
wrist and arm, until his head and shoulders rose above the opening. With
quick effort, then, he flung himself forward upon the roof, writhed
himself through, and stood erect.

Around him were the roofs of the separate apartments of the villa,
silvered gray where moonlight touched them. Flat and sloping and towered
were these, and broken by the in