ering
about?"

The girl plucked up courage and going up to the indignant man she said,
though more than once interrupted by tears.

"You must go father--indeed you must. I spoke to the foreman, and he told
me coolly and decidedly that the architect was placed here in Caesar's
name, and that if you do not obey him you will at once be superseded in
your office. And if that were to happen, if that--O father, father, only
think of blind Helios and poor Berenice! Arsinoe and I could earn our
bread, but the little ones--the little ones."

With these words the girl fell on her knees lifting her hands in entreaty
to her obstinate parent. The blood had mounted to the man's face and
eyes, and pressing his hand to his purple forehead he sank back in his
chair as if stricken with apoplexy. His daughter sprang up and offered
him the cup full of wine and water which was standing on the table; but
Keraunus pushed it aside with his hands, and panted out, while he
struggled for breath:

"Supersede me--in my place--turn me out of this palace! Why there, in
that ebony trunk, lies the rescript of Euergetes which confers the
stewardship of this residence on my ancestor Philip, and as a hereditary
dignity in his family. Now Philip's wife had the honor of being the
king's mistress--or, as some say, his daughter. There lies the document,
drawn up in red and black ink on yellow papyrus and ratified with the
seal and signature of Euergetes the Second. All the princes of the
Lagides have confirmed it, all the Roman prefects have respected it, and
now--now."

"But father" said the girl interrupting her father, and wringing her
hands in despair, "you still hold the place and if you will only give
in."

"Give in, give in," shrieked the corpulent steward shaking his fat hands
above his blood-shot face. "I will give in--I will not bring you all to
misery--for my children's sake I will allow myself to be ill-treated and
down-trodden, I will go--I will go directly. Like the pelican I will feed
my children with my heart's blood. But you ought to know what it costs
me, to humiliate myself thus; it is intolerable to me, and my heart is
breaking--for the architect, the architect has trampled upon me as if I
were his servant; he wished--I heard him with these ears--he shrieked
after me a villainous hope that I might be smothered in my own fat--and
the physician has told me I may die of apoplexy! Leave me, leave me. I
know those Romans are capable of