oners."

"Take these rings, and slip them into their hands."

"I will do my best."

"I knew you loved me, my good Sabaces. Now make haste, and come back
soon."

The old man went off as fast as he could. Atossa looked thoughtfully
after him, murmuring to herself: "Now they will both know, that I
loved them to the last. The rose means, 'I love you,' and the evergreen
cypress, 'true and steadfast.'" The old man came back in an hour;
bringing her Bartja's favorite ring, and from Darius an Indian
handkerchief dipped in blood.

Atossa ran to meet him; her eyes filled with tears as she took the
tokens, and seating herself under a spreading plane-tree, she pressed
them by turns to her lips, murmuring: "Bartja's ring means that he
thinks of me; the blood-stained handkerchief that Darius is ready to
shed his heart's blood for me."

Atossa smiled as she said this, and her tears, when she thought of
her friends and their sad fate, were quieter, if not less bitter, than
before.

A few hours later a messenger arrived from Croesus with news that the
innocence of Bartja and his friends had been proved, and that Nitetis
was, to all intents and purposes, cleared also.

Kassandane sent at once to the hanging-gardens, with a request that
Nitetis would come to her apartments. Atossa, as unbridled in her joy as
in her grief, ran to meet her friend's litter and flew from one of her
attendants to the other crying: "They are all innocent; we shall not
lose one of them--not one!"

When at last the litter appeared and her loved one, pale as death,
within it, she burst into loud sobs, threw her arms round Nitetis as she
descended, and covered her with kisses and caresses till she perceived
that her friend's strength was failing, that her knees gave way, and she
required a stronger support than Atossa's girlish strength could give.

The Egyptian girl was carried insensible into the queen-mother's
apartments. When she opened her eyes, her head-more like a marble piece
of sculpture than a living head--was resting on the blind queen's lap,
she felt Atossa's warm kisses on her forehead, and Cambyses, who had
obeyed his mother's call, was standing at her side.

She gazed on this circle, including all she loved best, with anxious,
perplexed looks, and at last, recognizing them one by one, passed her
hand across her pale fore head as if to remove a veil, smiled at each,
and closed her eyes once more. She fancied Isis had sent her a beautiful