sure his conduct, he should not find him wanting now. Harpagus then
went to receive the infant. The attendants of Mandane had been ordered
to deliver it to him. Not at all suspecting the object for which the
child was thus taken away, but naturally supposing, on the other hand,
that it was for the purpose of some visit, they arrayed their
unconscious charge in the most highly-wrought and costly of the robes
which Mandane, his mother, had for many months been interested in
preparing for him, and then gave him up to the custody of Harpagus,
expecting, doubtless, that he would be very speedily returned to their
care.

Although Harpagus had expressed a ready willingness to obey the cruel
behest of the king at the time of receiving it, he manifested, as soon
as he received the child, an extreme degree of anxiety and distress.
He immediately sent for a herdsman named Mitridates to come to him. In
the mean time, he took the child home to his house, and in a very
excited and agitated manner related to his wife what had passed. He
laid the child down in the apartment, leaving it neglected and alone,
while he conversed with his wife in a harried and anxious manner in
respect to the dreadful situation in which he found himself placed.
She asked him what he intended to do. He replied that he certainly
should not, himself, destroy the child. "It is the son of Mandane,"
said he. "She is the king's daughter. If the king should die, Mandane
would succeed him, and then what terrible danger would impend over me
if she should know me to have been the slayer of her son!" Harpagus
said, moreover, that he did not dare absolutely to disobey the orders
of the king so far as to save the child's life, and that he had sent
for a herdsman, whose pastures extended to wild and desolate forests
and mountains--the gloomy haunts of wild beasts and birds of
prey--intending to give the child to him, with orders to carry it into
those solitudes and abandon it there. His name was Mitridates.

While they were speaking this herdsman came in. He found Harpagus and
his wife talking thus together, with countenances expressive of
anxiety and distress, while the child, uneasy under the confinement
and inconveniences of its splendid dress, and terrified at the
strangeness of the scene and the circumstances around it, and perhaps,
moreover, experiencing some dawning and embryo emotions of resentment
at being laid down in neglect, cried aloud and incessantly. Harpa