"

"With all the joy in the world." The little poet coloured with delight at
the flattery. "You have saved me, I avow, from the forge and anvil of
Hephaestus. What a vulgar mob! Do stand apart; then I can try to thank
you."

Aided again by his two protectors, Simonides was soon clear of the
whirlpool. Under one of the graceful pines, which girded the long stadium,
he recovered breath and looked at leisure upon his new acquaintances. Both
were striking men, but in sharp contrast: the taller and darker showed an
aquiline visage betraying a strain of non-Grecian blood. His black eyes
and large mouth were very merry. He wore his green chiton with a
rakishness that proved him anything but a dandy. His companion, addressed
as Democrates, slighter, blonder, showed Simonides a handsome and truly
Greek profile, set off by a neatly trimmed reddish beard. His purple-edged
cloak fell in statuesque folds of the latest mode, his beryl signet-ring,
scarlet fillet, and jewelled girdle bespoke wealth and taste. His face,
too, might have seemed frank and affable, had not Simonides suddenly
recalled an old proverb about mistrusting a man with eyes too close
together.

"And now," said the little poet, quite as ready to pay compliments as to
take them, "let me thank my noble deliverers, for I am sure two such
valorous young men as you must come of the best blood of Attica."

"I am not ashamed of my father, sir," spoke the taller Athenian; "Hellas
has not yet forgotten Miltiades, the victor of Marathon."

"Then I clasp the hand of Cimon, the son of the saviour of Hellas." The
little poet's eyes danced. "Oh! the pity I was in Thessaly so long, and
let you grow up in my absence. A noble son of a noble father! And your
friend--did you name him Democrates?"

"I did so."

"Fortunate old rascal I am! For I meet Cimon the son of Miltiades, and
Democrates, that young lieutenant of Themistocles who all the world knows
is gaining fame already as Nestor and Odysseus, both in one, among the
orators of Athens."

"Your compliments exceed all truth," exclaimed the second Athenian, not at
all angered by the praise. But Simonides, whose tongue was brisk, ran on
with a torrent of flattery and of polite insinuation, until Cimon halted
him, with a query.

"Yet why, dear Cean, since, as you say, you only arrived this afternoon at
the Isthmus, were you so anxious to stake that money on Glaucon?"

"Why? Because I, like all Greece outside of Sparta, see