les?"

"A courteous letter of thanks to Ageladas." The senior statesman was
frowning. "Glaucon is right. Either you are turned mad, or are victim of
some prank,--is it yours, Cimon?"

"I am as innocent as a babe. I'd swear it by the Styx," responded that
young man, scratching his muddled head.

"I fear we are not at the end of the examination," observed Democrates,
with ominous slowness. "Now, Seuthes, recollect your plight. Have you no
other letter about you?"

"None!" groaned the unheroic Corinthian. "Ah! pity, kind sirs; what have I
done? Suffer me to go."

"It is possible," remarked his prosecutor, "you are an innocent victim, or
at least do not realize the intent of what you bear. I must examine the
lining of your chalmys. Nothing. Your girdle. Nothing. Your hat, remove
it. Quite empty. Blessed be Athena if my fears prove groundless. But my
first duty is to Athens and Hellas. Ah! Your high boots. Remove the right
one." The orator felt within, and shook the boot violently. "Nothing
again. The left one, empty it seems. _Ei!_ what is this?"

In a tense silence he shook from the boot a papyrus, rolled and sealed. It
fell on the floor at the feet of Themistocles, who, watching all his
lieutenant did, bent and seized it instantly; then it dropped from his
hands as a live coal.

"The seal! The seal! May Zeus smite me blind if I see aright!"

Hermippus, who had been following all the scene in silence, bent, lifted
the fateful paper, and he too gave a cry of grief.

"It is the seal of Glaucon. How came it here?"

"Glaucon,"--hard as Democrates's voice had been that night, it rang like
cold iron now,--"as the friend of your boyhood, and one who would still do
for you all he may, I urge you as you love me to look upon this seal."

"I am looking," but as he spoke paleness followed the angry flush on the
athlete's forehead. He needed no omen to tell him something fearful was
about to ensue.

"The seal is yours?"

"The very same, two dancing maenads and over them a winged Eros. But how
came this letter here? I did not--"

"As you love life or death, as you preserve any regard for our friendship,
I adjure you,--not to brave it longer, but to confess--"

"Confess what? My head is reeling."

"The treason in which you have dipped your hands, your dealings with the
Persian spy, your secret interviews, and last of all this letter,--I fear a
gross betrayal of all trust,--to some agent of Xerxes. I shudder when I
thi