ather's recovery.

But at length the girl looked up with an eager gaze and said, sadly
enough: "You said something about an antidote to poison, Apuleius? Then
my father tried to escape the final destruction by attempting to kill
himself.--Is it so?"

The leech looked at her keenly, and after confirming her suspicion and
explaining to her exactly how the fateful deed had been accomplished, he
went on:

"The storm had completely unnerved him--it unmanned us all--and yet that
was only the prelude to the tremendous doom which is hanging over the
universe. It is at hand; we can hear its approach; the stones are
yielding! the Christian's engines are opening the way for it to enter!"

Apuleius spoke in a tone of sinister foreboding, and the falling stones
dislodged by the battering-ram thundered a solemn accompaniment to his
prophecy. Gorgo, turned pale; but it was not the physician's ominous
speech that alarmed her, but the quaking of the walls of the room. Still,
the Serapeum was built for eternity; the ram might bring down a wall, but
it could not destroy or even shake the building itself.

Outside, the hubbub of fighting men grew louder and louder every minute,
and Apuleius, increasingly anxious, went to the door to listen. Gorgo
could see that his hands trembled! he--a man--was frightened, while she
felt no anxiety but for her suffering father! Through that breach
Constantine would enter--and where he commanded she was safe. As to the
destruction of the universe--she no longer believed in it. When the
physician turned round and saw her calmly and quietly wiping the cold
drops from the sick man's brow, he said gloomily: "Of what use is it to
shut our eyes like the ostrich. They are fighting down there for life or
death--we had better prepare for the end. If they venture--and they
will--to lay a sacrilegious hand on the god, besiegers and besieged
alike--the whole world together, must perish."

But Gorgo shook her head. "No, no," she cried, with zealous confidence.
"No, Apuleius, Serapis is not what you believe him to be; for, if he
were, would he suffer his enemies to overthrow his temple and his image?
Why does he not, at this supreme moment, inspire his worshippers with
courage? I have seen the men--mere boys--and the women who have assembled
here to fight for him. They are nothing but drivellers and triflers. If
the master is like his men it serves him right if he is overthrown; to
weep for him would be waste of w