And a fair-faced smile
Hath planted a snare for his friend!
Though fleet, we shall find him;
Though strong, we shall bind him,
Who planted a snare for his friend!"

He had intended to be loyal to Hellas,--to strive valiantly for her
freedom,--and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap,
but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul's price
was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the
night scene at Colonus?

The next morning he made a formal visit to the shrine of the Furies in the
hill of Areopagus. "An old vow, too long deferred in payment, taken when
he joined in his first contest on the Bema," he explained to friends, when
he visited this uncanny spot.

Few were the Athenians who would pass that cleft in the Areopagus where
the "Avengers" had their grim sanctuary without a quick motion of the
hands to avert the evil eye. Thieves and others of evil conscience would
make a wide circuit rather than pass this abode of Alecto, Megaera, and
Tisiphone, pitiless pursuers of the guilty. The terrible sisters hounded a
man through life, and after death to the judgment bar of Minos. With
reason, therefore, the guilty dreaded them.

Democrates had brought the proper sacrifices--two black rams, which were
duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled
with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor
if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty
goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door
which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a
jagged, unhewn cranny, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright and
reaching far into the sculptured rock. No image: only a few rough votive
tablets set up by a grateful suppliant for some mercy from the awful
goddesses.

"If you would pray here, _kyrie_," said the hag, "it is needful that I go
forth and close the door. The holy Furies love the dark, for is not their
home in Tartarus?"

She went forth. As the light vanished, Democrates seemed buried in the
rock. Out of the blackness spectres were springing against him. From a
cleft he heard a flapping, a bat, an imprisoned bird, or Alecto's direful
wings. He held his hands downward, for he had to address infernal
goddesses, and prayed in haste.

"O ye sisters, terrible yet gracious, give ear. If by my offerings I have
found fa