readily to the agitators who whispered how much better
they would have fared on the galleys of Octavianus.

Pyrrhus entreated his sons not to join any attempt at mutiny; the women,
on the contrary, would have approved anything which promised to release
the youths from their severe service, and their bright cheerfulness
was transformed into anxious depression. Barine, too, was no longer the
same. She had lost her joyous activity, her eyes were often wet with
tears, and she moved with drooping head as if some heavy care oppressed
her.

Was it the heat of April, with its desert winds, which had brought the
transformation? Had longing for the changeful, exciting life of former
days at last overpowered her? Was solitude becoming unendurable? Was her
husband's love no longer sufficient to replace the many pleasures she
had sacrificed?--No! It could not be that; never had she gazed with more
devoted tenderness into Dion's face than when entirely alone with him
in shady nooks. She who in such hours looked the very embodiment of
happiness and contentment, certainly was neither ill nor sorrowful.

Dion, on the contrary, held his head high early and late, and appeared
as proud and self-conscious as though life was showing him its fairest
face. Yet he had heard that his estates had been sequestrated, and that
he owed it solely to the influence of Archibius and his uncle, that his
property, like that of so many others, had not been added to the royal
treasures. But what disaster could he not have speedily vanquished in
these days?

A great joy--the greatest which the immortals can bestow upon human
beings--was dawning for him and his young wife, and in May the women on
the island shared her blissful hope.

Pyrrhus brought from the city an altar and a marble statue of Ilythyia,
the Goddess of Birth, called by the Romans Lucina, which his friend
Anukis had given him, in Charmian's name, for the young wife. She
had again spoken of the serpents which lived in such numbers in the
neighbouring islands, and her question whether it would be difficult to
capture one alive was answered by the freedman in the negative.

The image of the goddess and the altar were erected beside the other
sanctuaries, and how often the stone was anointed by Barine and the
women of the fisherman's family!

Dion vowed to the goddess a beautiful temple on the cliff and in the
city if she would be gracious to his beloved young wife.

When, in June, the noo