t comer at least, was unwelcome.

"Ha! my Lord Pollux, is it you!" exclaimed Lycidas, with courteous
salutation. "I missed you suddenly from my side to-day at that--shall
I call it tragedy?--for never was a more thrilling scene acted before
the eyes of man."

"I was taken with a giddiness--a touch of fever," replied the courtier
addressed by the name of Pollux. He looked haggard and pale as he
spoke.

"I marvel not--I marvel not if your blood boiled to fever-heat, as did
mine!" cried Lycidas. "No generous spirit could have beheld unmoved
those seven Hebrew brethren, one after another, before the eyes of
their mother, tortured to death in the presence of Antiochus, because
they refused to break a law which they regarded as divine!"

"Nay," replied Pollux, forcing a smile; "their fate was nothing to me.
What cared I if they chose to throw away their lives like fools for an
idle superstition!"

"Fools! say rather like heroes!" exclaimed Lycidas, stopping short (for
he had turned and joined Pollux in his walk). "I marvel that you have
so little sympathy for those gallant youths--you who, from your cast of
features, I should have deemed to be one of their race."

Pollux winced, and knitted his dark brows, as if the remark were
unwelcome.

"I have looked on the Olympic arena," continued Lycidas, resuming his
walk, and quickening his steps as he warmed with his subject; "I have
seen the athletes with every muscle strained, their limbs intertwined,
wrestling like Milo; or pressing forward in the race for the crown and
the palm, as if life were less dear than victory. But never before had
I beheld such a struggle as that on which my eyes looked to-day, where
the triumph was over the fear of man, the fear of death, where mortals
wrestled with agony, and overcame it, silent, or but speaking such
brave words as burnt themselves into the memory, deathless utterances
from the dying! There were no plaudits to encourage these athletes, at
least none that man could hear; there was no shouting as each victor
reached the goal. But if the fortitude of suffering virtue be indeed a
spectacle on which the gods admiringly look, then be assured that the
invisible ones were gazing down to-day on that glorious arena, ay, and
preparing the crown and the palm! For I can as soon believe,"
continued the Athenian, raising his arm and pointing towards the
setting sun, "that that orb is lost, extinguished, blotted out from the
universe,