blood run chill. He
cowered helplessly. The admiral stood, his own fine face covered with a
mingling of pity, contempt, pain.

"Democrates, hearken,"--his voice was hard as flint. "We have seized your
camp chest, found the key to your ciphers, and know all your
correspondence with Lycon. We have discovered your fearful power of
forgery. Hermes the Trickster gave it you for your own destruction. We
have brought Hiram hither from the ship. This night he has ridden the
'Little Horse.'(17) He has howled out everything. We have seized Bias and
heard his story. There is nothing to conceal. From the beginning of your
peculation of the public money, till the moment when, the prisoners say,
you were in Mardonius's camp, all is known to us. You need not confess.
There is nothing worth confessing."

"I am glad,"--great beads were on the prisoner's brow,--"but you do not
realize the temptation. Have you never yourself been betwixt Scylla and
Charybdis? Have I not vowed every false step should be the last? I fought
against Lycon. I fought against Mardonius. They were too strong. Athena
knoweth I did not crave the tyranny of Athens! It was not that which drove
me to betray Hellas."

"I believe you. But why did you not trust me at the first?"

"I hardly understand."

"When first your need of money drove you to crime, why did you not come to
me? You knew I loved you. You knew I looked on you as my political son and
heir in the great work of making Athens the light of Hellas. I would have
given you the gold,--yes, fifty talents."

"_Ai, ai_, if I had only dared! I thought of it. I was afraid."

"Right." Themistocles's lip was curling. "You are more coward than knave
or traitor. Phobos, Black Fear, has been your leading god, not Hermes. And
now--"

"But you have promised I shall escape."

"You shall."

"To-night? What is that you have?" Themistocles was opening the casket.

"The papers seized in your chest. They implicate many noble Hellenes in
Corinth, Sicyon, Sparta. Behold--" Themistocles held one papyrus after
another in the torch-flame,--"here is crumbling to ashes the evidence that
would destroy them all as Medizers. Mardonius is dead. Let the war die
with him. Hellas is safe."

"Blessings, blessings! Help me to escape. You have a sword. Pry off these
gyves. How easy for you to let me fly!"

"Wait!" The admiral's peremptory voice silenced the prisoner. Themistocles
finished his task. Suddenly, however, Democrates h