surrounding foliage.
I overheard--I marked the whole. I saw thy weapon pierce the heart of
Apaecides. I blame not the deed--it destroyed a foe and an apostate.'

'Thou sawest the whole!' said Arbaces, dryly; 'so I imagined--thou wert
alone.'

'Alone!' returned Calenus, surprised at the Egyptian's calmness.

'And wherefore wert thou hid behind the chapel at that hour?'

'Because I had learned the conversion of Apaecides to the Christian
faith--because I knew that on that spot he was to meet the fierce
Olinthus--because they were to meet there to discuss plans for unveiling
the sacred mysteries of our goddess to the people--and I was there to
detect, in order to defeat them.'

'Hast thou told living ear what thou didst witness?'

'No, my master: the secret is locked in thy servant's breast.'

'What! even thy kinsman Burbo guesses it not! Come, the truth!'

'By the gods...'

'Hush! we know each other--what are the gods to us?'

'By the fear of thy vengeance, then--no!'

'And why hast thou hitherto concealed from me this secret? Why hast
thou waited till the eve of the Athenian's condemnation before thou hast
ventured to tell me that Arbaces is a murderer? And having tarried so
long, why revealest thou now that knowledge?'

'Because--because...' stammered Calenus, coloring and in confusion.

'Because,' interrupted Arbaces, with a gentle smile, and tapping the
priest on the shoulder with a kindly and familiar gesture--'because,
my Calenus (see now, I will read thy heart, and explain its
motives)--because thou didst wish thoroughly to commit and entangle me
in the trial, so that I might have no loophole of escape; that I might
stand firmly pledged to perjury and to malice, as well as to homicide;
that having myself whetted the appetite of the populace to blood, no
wealth, no power, could prevent my becoming their victim: and thou
tellest me thy secret now, ere the trial be over and the innocent
condemned, to show what a desperate web of villainy thy word to-morrow
could destroy; to enhance in this, the ninth hour, the price of thy
forbearance; to show that my own arts, in arousing the popular wrath,
would, at thy witness, recoil upon myself; and that if not for Glaucus,
for me would gape the jaws of the lion! Is it not so?'

'Arbaces, replied Calenus, losing all the vulgar audacity of his natural
character, 'verily thou art a Magician; thou readest the heart as it
were a scroll.'

'It is my vocation,'