at every
blow, and followed up by his terrible companions.

They were but just in time. The four white blood-horses were plunging
and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his chariot, with
a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands of twenty wild
monks clutching at him. 'Monks again!' thought Philammon and as he saw
among them more than one hateful face, which he recollected in Cyril's
courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of fierce revenge ran through
him.

'Mercy!' shrieked the miserable Prefect--'I am a Christian! I swear that
I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at Constantinople!'

'Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses the
adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the patriarch!
Tear him out of the chariot!' yelled the monks.

The craven hound!' said the Amal, stopping short, 'I won't help him!'
But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and left; the
monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so shameful a scandal
to the faith to which he still clung convulsively, sprang into the
chariot and caught Orestes in his arms.

'You are safe, my lord; don't struggle,' whispered he, while the monks
flew on him. A stone or two struck him, but they only quickened his
determination, and in another moment the whistling of the whips round
his head, and the yell and backward rush of the monks, told him that he
was safe. He carried his burden safely within the doorway of Pelagia's
house, into the crowd of peeping and shrieking damsels, where twenty
pairs of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew
him into the court.

'Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!' simpered he, as he
vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound rip
with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence as he
could muster.

'Your Excellency--heroes all--I am your devoted slave. I owe you life
itself; and more, the valour of your succour is only surpassed by the
deliciousness of your cure. I would gladly undergo a second wound to
enjoy a second time the services of such hands, and to see such feet
busying themselves on my behalf.'

'You wouldn't have said that five minutes ago, quoth the Amal, looking
at him very much as a bear might at a monkey.

'Never mind the hands and feet, old fellow, they are none of yours!'
bluntly observed a voice from behind' probably Smid's, and a laugh
ensu