e had hurried to the spot
where the battering-ram had by this time dealt a second blow, shouting as
he went to every man who was not a coward to follow him.

Karnis, Orpheus and the rest of the high-priest's guests obeyed his call
and gathered round him; he commanded that everything portable should be
brought out of the temple to be built into a barricade behind the point
of attack, and that neither the most precious and beautiful statues, nor
the brass and marble stelae and altar-slabs should be spared. Screened by
this barricade, and armed with lances and bows--of which there were
plenty at hand--he proposed, when the breach was made, to check the
further advance of the foe.

He was not ill-pleased that the only way of escape was cut off; and as
soon as he had seen the statues dragged from their pedestals, the
altar-stones removed from the sacred places they had filled for half a
century, benches and jars piled together and a stone barricade thus
fairly advanced towards completion, he drafted off a small force for the
defences on the roof. There was no escape now; and many a one who, to the
very last, had hoped to find himself free, mounted the stairs
reluctantly, because he would there be more immediately in the face of
the foe than when defending the breach.

Olympius distributed weapons, and went from one to another, speaking
words of encouragement; presently he found Gorgo who, with the bereaved
widow, was still sitting at the foot of the statue of justice. He told
her that her father was ill, and desired a servant to show her the way to
his private room, that she might help the leech in attending on him.
Berenice could not be induced to stir; she longed only for the end and
was persuaded that it could not be far off. She listened eagerly to the
blows of the battering-engine; each one sounded to her like a shock to
the very structure of the universe. Another--and another--and at last the
ancient masonry must give way and the grave that had already opened for
her husband and her son would yawn to swallow her up with her sorrows.
She shuddered and drew her hood over her face to screen it from the sun
which now began to shine in. Its light was a grievance to her; she had
hoped never to see another day.

The women, and with them a few helpless weaklings, had withdrawn to the
rotunda, and before long they were laughing as saucily as ever.

From the roof blocks of stone and broken statues were hailing down on the
b