ing with vehement insistence that he had seen Agne in the church
and wanted to go back to her. Dada, however, neither heard nor heeded;
frightened out of her wits she went on with the crowd, taking him with
her.

She never paused till she reached the house of Medius, quite out of
breath; but then, as the little boy still asserted that he had seen his
sister in the sanctuary, she turned back with him, as soon as the throng
had dispersed. In the church there was no one to hinder them; but they
got no further than the dividing screen, for on the floor beyond lay the
mutilated and bleeding bodies of many a youth who had fallen in the
contest.

How she made her way back to the house of Medius once more she never
knew. For the first time she had been brought face to face with life in
hideous earnest, and when the singer went to look for her in her room, at
dusk, he was startled to find her bright face clouded and her eyes dim
with tears. How bitterly she had been weeping Medius indeed could not
know; he ascribed her altered appearance to fear of the approaching
cataclysm and was happy to be able to tell her, in all good faith, that
the danger was as good as over. Posidonius, the Magian, had been to see
him, and had completely reassured him. This man, whose accomplice he had
been again and again in producing false apparitions of spirits and
demons, had once gained an extraordinary influence over him by casting
some mysterious spell upon him and reducing his will to abject subjection
to his own; and this magician, who had recovered his own self-possession,
had assured him, with an inimitable air of infallibility, that the fall
of the Temple of Serapis would involve no greater catastrophe than that
of any old worn-out statue. Since this announcement Medius had laughed at
his own alarms; he had recovered his "strong-mindedness," and when
Posidonius had given him three tickets for the Hippodrome he had jumped
at the offer.

The races were to be run next day, in spite of the general panic that had
fallen on the citizens; and Dada, when he invited her to join him and his
daughter in-the enjoyment of so great a treat, dried her eyes and
accepted gleefully.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Alarming as was the outlook in Alexandria, the races, were to be held as
usual. This had been decided only a few hours since at the Bishop's
palace, and criers had been sent abroad throughout the streets and
squares of the city to bid the inhabitants to