dane was ten years old an accident brought him to
the knowledge of the king, and restored him to his birthright. One day
he was playing with the children of his neighbors, and in a certain
game where it was necessary to make one of the players king, Cyrus was
chosen, and all the others, as his subjects, promised to obey his
commands. But one of the boys, the son of a rich noble of the court of
Astyages, refused to do as he was bid by Cyrus, and according to the
rule of the game, he had to submit to a beating at the hand of the
boy-king. Angry at this treatment, he complained to his father, who,
indignant in his turn, went to Astyages, and reproached him with the
blows his son had received at the hands of the son of one of the
king's slaves. Cyrus was brought before the king; but when he was
asked how he had dared to treat the son of a nobleman in such a way,
the boy, nothing daunted, answered that he had done only what was
right: the rules of the game were known to all who had joined in it:
the other boys had submitted to the penalties: the son of the nobleman
alone had refused, and he had been punished as he deserved. "If any
wrong has been done by me," he said, "I am ready to suffer for it."
Struck by the boldness of the lad, and by something in his looks,
Astyages dismissed him for a time, and promised the nobleman that he
should be satisfied for the insults offered to his son. He then sent
for the herdsman Mitridates and wrung from him a confession of what he
had done; and learning how Harpagus had deceived him he acquitted
Mitridates, and turned all his vengeance upon Harpagus as the chief
offender. How cruelly he punished him must not be told here, for pity,
but it was such a barbarous revenge as could never be forgiven; and
though Harpagus pretended to make light of it, yet it was only that by
keeping fair with the king he might bide his time, and repay cruelty
with cruelty.

But now, as Cyrus in our story has grown to man's estate, and is ready
to show the world of what stuff he is made, it will be well to explain
in a few words, what was the state of things in that part of the
world where he was to play his part.

The mighty Kingdom of Assyria in its greatest estate had stretched
from the Indus on the east, to the Mediterranean on the west. But when
Nineveh, the capital and chief city of the empire, had been destroyed
by the Medes--a subject people living on the north-eastern borders of
the kingdom, but who h