ss at his side, and his cheeks became pale as death.

These signs of sorrow softened the old man's indignation. His love was
strong enough to embrace the guilty as well as the innocent Bartja, and
taking the young man's right hand in both his own, he looked at him as
a father would who finds his son, wounded on the battle-field, and said:
"Tell me, my poor, infatuated boy, how was it that your pure heart fell
away so quickly to the evil powers?"

Bartja shuddered. The blood came back to his face, but these words
cut him to the heart. For the first time in his life his belief in the
justice of the gods forsook him.

He called himself the victim of a cruel, inexorable fate, and felt
like a bunted animal driven to its last gasp and hearing the dogs and
sportsmen fast coming nearer. He had a sensitive, childlike nature,
which did not yet know how to meet the hard strokes of fate. His body
and his physical courage had been hardened against bodily and physical
enemies; but his teachers had never told him how to meet a hard lot in
life; for Cambyses and Bartja seemed destined only to drink out of the
cup of happiness and joy.

Zopyrus could not bear to see his friend in tears. He reproached the
old man angrily with being unjust and severe. Gyges' looks were full
of entreaty, and Araspes stationed himself between the old man and the
youth, as if to ward off the blame of the elder from cutting deeper into
the sad and grieved heart of the younger man. Darius, however, after
having watched them for some time, came up with quiet deliberation to
Croesus, and said: "You continue to distress and offend one another, and
yet the accused does not seem to know with what offence he is charged,
nor will the accuser hearken to his defence. Tell us, Croesus, by the
friendship which has subsisted between us up to this clay, what has
induced you to judge Bartja so harshly, when only a short time ago you
believed in his innocence?"

The old man told at once what Darius desired to know--that he had seen
a letter, written in Nitetis' own hand, in which she made a direct
confession of her love to Bartja and asked him to meet her alone. The
testimony of his own eyes and of the first men in the realm, nay, even
the dagger found under Nitetis' windows, had not been able to convince
him that his favorite was guilty; but this letter had gone like a
burning flash into his heart and destroyed the last remnant of his
belief in the virtue and purity of