oo, for he ruthlessly
flung down now a pebble, now a clod, one after the other, till her hands
were losing their last feeble hold and she was on the point of falling
into the fatal gulf below. Her own cry of terror aroused her, but during
the brief process of returning from her dream to actuality, she saw
through swiftly parting mists--only for an instant, and yet quite
plainly--the tall grass of a meadow, spangled with ox-eye daisies, white
and gold, with violet-hued blue bells and scarlet poppies, among which
she was lying--as in a soft green bed, while near the sward lay a
sparkling blue lake and behind it rose beautiful swelling hills, with red
cliffs, and green groves, and meadows bright in the clear sunshine. A
clear sky, across which a soft breeze gently blew light silvery flakes of
cloud, bent over the lovely but fleeting picture, which she could not
compare with anything she had ever seen near her own home.

She had only slept for a short time, but when, once more thoroughly
awake, she rubbed her eyes, she thought her dream must have lasted for
hours.

One flame of the three-branched lamp had flickered into extinction and
the wick of another was beginning to waste. She hastily put it out with a
pair of tongs that hung by a chain, and then after pouring fresh oil into
the lamp that was still burning she carried the light into her father's
sleeping room.

He had not yet returned. She was seized with a mortal terror. Had the
architect's wine bereft him of his senses? Had he on his way back to his
rooms been seized with a fresh attack of giddiness? In spirit she saw the
heavy man incapable of raising himself, dying perhaps where he had
fallen.

No choice remained to her; she must go at once to the hall of the Muses
and see what had happened to her father, pick him up, give him help
or--if he still were feasting--endeavor to tempt him back by any excuse
she could find. Everything was at stake; her father's life and with it
maintenance and shelter for eight helpless creatures.

The December night was stormy, a keen and bitter wind blew through the
ill-closed opening in the roof of the room as Selene, before she began
her expedition, tied a handkerchief over her head and threw over her
shoulders a white mantle which had been worn by her dead mother. In the
long corridor which lay between her father's rooms and the front portion
of the palace, she had to screen the flickering light of the little lamp
with her lef