f nothing but filling your own
cheek-pouches!--to give him a wife worthy of a hero, as he is, in spite
of all--a wife who will make him sober instead of drunk, wise instead
of a fool, daring instead of a sluggard--a wife who can command the rich
people for us, and give us a hold here, which if once we get, let us see
who will break it! Why, with those two ruling in Alexandria, we might be
masters of Africa in three months. We'd send to Spain for the Wendels,
to move on Carthage; we'd send up the Adriatic for the Longbeards to
land in Pentapolis; we'd sweep the whole coast without losing a man' now
it is drained of troops by that fool Heraclian's Roman expedition; make
the Wendels and Longbeards shake hands here in Alexandria; draw lots for
their shares of the coast' and then--'

'And then what?'

'Why, when we had settled Africa, I would call out a crew of picked
heroes, and sail away south for Asgard--I'd try that Red Sea this
time--and see Odin face to face, or die searching for him.'

'Oh!' groaned Smid. 'And I suppose you would expect me to come too,
instead of letting me stop halfway, and settle there among the dragons
and elephants. Well, well, wise men are like moorlands--ride as far as
you will on the sound ground, you are sure to come upon a soft place at
last. However, I will go down to the guards to-morrow, if my head don't
ache.'

'And I will see the boy about Pelagia. Drink to our plot!'

And the two old iron-heads drank on, till the stars paled out and the
eastward shadows of the cloister vanished in the blaze of dawn.

CHAPTER XIX: JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS

THE little porter, after having carried Arsenius's message to Miriam,
had run back in search of Philammon and his foster-father; and not
finding them, had spent the evening in such frantic rushings to and fro,
as produced great doubts of his sanity among the people of the quarter.
At last hunger sent him home to supper; at which meal he tried to find
vent for his excited feelings in his favourite employment of beating his
wife. Whereon Miriam's two Syrian slave-girls, attracted by her screams,
came to the rescue, threw a pail of water over him, and turned him out
of doors. He, nothing discomfited, likened himself smilingly to Socrates
conquered by Xantippe; and, philosophically yielding to circumstances,
hopped about like a tame magpie for a couple of hours at the entrance of
the alley, pouring forth a stream of light raillery on the passer