rrible things. Your
Uncle Archias's house was destroyed; yonder men were the criminals."

"In the capital!" Philippus exclaimed furiously, and Hermon cried in no
less vehement excitement: "How did my uncle get the ill will of these
monsters? But as the vengeance is in your hands, they will atone for this
breach of the peace!"

"Severely, perhaps too severely," replied Eumedes gloomily, and Philippus
asked his son how this evil deed could have happened, and the purport of
the King's command.

The admiral related what had occurred in the capital since his departure
from Pithom.

The four thousand Gauls who had been sent by King Antiochus to the
Egyptian army as auxiliary troops against Cyrene refused, before reaching
Paraetonium, on the western frontier of the Egyptian kingdom, to obey
their Greek commanders. As they tried to force them to continue their
march, the barbarians left them bound in the road. They spared their
lives, but rushed with loud shouts of exultation toward Alexandria, which
was close at hand.

They had learned that the city was almost stripped of troops, and the
most savage instinct urged them toward the wealthy capital.

Without encountering any resistance, they broke through the necropolis
into Alexandria, crossed the Draco canal, and marched past the unfinished
Temple of Serapis through the Rhakotis. At the Canopic Way they turned
eastward and rushed through this main artery of traffic till, in the
Brucheium, they hastened in a northerly direction toward the sea.

South of the Theatre of Dionysus they halted. One division turned toward
the market-place, another toward the royal palaces.

Until they reached the Brucheium the hordes, so eager for booty, had
refrained from plunder and pillage.

Their whole strength was to be reserved, as the examination proved, for
the attack upon the royal palaces. Several people who were thoroughly
familiar with Alexandria had acted as guides.

The instigator of the mutiny was said to be a Gallic captain who had
taken part in the surprise of Delphi, but, having ventured to punish
disobedient soldiers, he was killed. A bridge-builder from the ranks, and
his wife, who was not of Gallic blood, had taken his place.

This woman, a resolute and obstinate but rarely beautiful creature, when
the division that was to attack the royal palaces was marching past the
house which Hermon had occupied as the heir of Myrtilus, pressed forward
herself across the threshol