r. Democrates seized a heavy dog-whip, lashed the boy
unmercifully, then cast him out, threatening that eavesdropping would be
rewarded by "cutting into shoe soles." Then the master resumed his
feverish pacings and the nervous twisting of his fingers. Unfortunately,
Bias felt certain the threat would never have been uttered unless the
weightiest of matters had been on foot. As in all Greek dwellings,
Democrates's rooms were divided not by doors but by hanging curtains, and
Bias, letting curiosity master fear, ensconced himself again behind one of
these and saw all his master's doings. What Democrates said and did,
however, puzzled his good servant quite sufficiently.

Democrates had opened the privy cupboard, taken out one of the caskets and
scattered its contents upon the table, then selected a papyrus, and seemed
copying the writing thereon with extreme care. Next one of the clay seals
came into play. Democrates was testing it upon wax. Then the orator rose,
dashed the wax upon the floor, put his sandal thereon, tore the papyrus on
which he wrote to bits. Again he paced restlessly, his hands clutching his
hair, his forehead frowns and blackness, while Bias thought he heard him
muttering as he walked:--

"O Zeus! O Apollo! O Athena! I cannot do this thing! Deliver me! Deliver!"

Then back to the table again, once more to pick up the mysterious clay,
again to copy, to stamp on the wax, to fling down, mutilate, and destroy.
The pantomime was gone through three times. Bias could make nothing of it.
Since the day his parents--following the barbarous Thracian custom--had sold
him into slavery and he had passed into Democrates's service, the lad had
never seen his master acting thus.

"Clearly the _kyrios_ is mad," was his own explanation, and growing
frightened at following the strange movements of his lord, he crept from
his retreat and tried to banish uncanny fears at a safe distance, by tying
a thread to the leg of a gold-chafer(5) and watching its vain efforts at
flight. Yet had he continued his eavesdropping he might have found--if not
the key to all Democrates's doings--at least a partial explanation. For the
fourth time the papyrus had been written, for the fourth time the orator
had torn it up. Then his eyes went down to the lump of clay before him on
the table.

"Curses upon the miserable stuff!" he swore almost loudly; "it is this
which has set the evil thoughts to racing. Destroy _that_, and the deed is
beyon