oining all men to search for and
arrest every person concerned in the murder of Ameres, and doubtless
the severest penalties will be dealt to them. The same decree orders
your arrest wherever found, and enjoins upon all officials throughout
the kingdom to keep a strict watch in the towns and villages, to
examine any strangers who may present themselves, and to send hither
bound in chains all young men who may fail to give a satisfactory
account of themselves. Sacrifices will be offered up at all the
temples throughout the land to appease the wrath of the gods.
Messengers have been dispatched in all directions in the provinces,
and all seemed to consider it certain that in a few hours our
hiding-place would be discovered. All made sure that we had made
either for the seacoast or the desert on one side or the other, and as
the messengers would reach the coast long before we could do so, it
was considered impossible for us to get through unnoticed.

"Then I went to the house, not intending to go in, but simply to see
if those in the neighborhood had heard any further news. The gates
were open, and quite a crowd of people were passing in and out to
gratify their curiosity by gazing on the scene. Relying upon my
disguise I went in with the rest. None entered the house, for a guard
of soldiers had been stationed there. I passed round at the back and
presently Lyptis, the old female slave, came out to fetch water. I
spoke to her in my assumed character, but she only shook her head and
made no reply. Then believing that she, like all the others in the
house, was attached to the family and could be trusted, I spoke to her
in my natural voice, and she at once knew me. I made a sign to her to
be silent and withdrew with her alone to some bushes. The tears were
streaming down her face.

"'Oh, Jethro!' she exclaimed, 'did the gods ever before hurl such
calamities upon a household? My dear master is dead; my lord Chebron
is hunted for as men hunt for a wild beast; my dear young mistress,
Mysa, is missing!'

"'Missing!' I exclaimed. 'What do you mean?'

"'Have you not heard it?' she said.

"'I have heard nothing!' I cried. 'Tell me all!'

"'Just after the gates were beaten down and the crowd rushed along
into the garden, four men burst into the house and ran from chamber to
chamber until they entered that of my young mistress. We heard a
scream, and a moment later they came out again bearing a figure
enveloped in a wrapping. W