It would be hardly necessary to say that, after reading this appeal, Agias hurried away to do all that lay in his power to console Artemisia, and deliver her from her danger.  When he reached Pratinas’s tenement, Artemisia ran to meet him, and kissed him again and again, and cuddled down in his strong, young arms, quite content to believe that she had found a protector on whom she could cast all her burdens.  And Agias?  He laughed and bade her wipe away her tears, and swore a great oath that, so long as he breathed, Calatinus should not lay a finger upon her.

Artemisia had practically told all her story in her letter.  It was clear that Calatinus had caught sight of her several times,—­though she had remained in blissful ignorance,—­and Pratinas had deliberately planned to waylay him as a customer who would pay a good price for the girl, whom it would be manifestly inconvenient for him to take with Valeria on his premeditated flight to Egypt.  But this enlightenment did not make Agias’s task any the easier.  He knew perfectly well that he could never raise a tithe of the forty thousand sesterces that Pratinas was to receive from Calatinus, and so redeem Artemisia.  He had no right to expect the gift of such a sum from Drusus.  If Pratinas really owned the poor girl as a slave, he could do anything he listed with her, and no law could be invoked to say him nay.  There was only one recourse left to Agias, and that was fairly desperate—­to carry off Artemisia and keep her in hiding until Pratinas should give up the quest and depart for Egypt.  That there was peril in such a step he was well aware.  Not merely could Artemisia, if recaptured, receive any form whatsoever of brutal punishment, but he, as the abettor of her flight, would be liable to a heavy penalty.  Slave property was necessarily very precarious property, and to aid a slave to escape was an extremely heinous crime.  “So many slaves, so many enemies,” ran the harsh maxim; and it was almost treason to society for a freedman to aid a servant to run away.

But Agias had no time to count the cost, no time to evolve a plan of escape that admitted no form of disaster.  Artemisia besought him not to leave her for a moment, and accordingly he remained by her, laughing, poking fun, and making reckless gibes at her fears.  Sesostris went about his simple household duties with a long face, and now and then a tear trickled down his cheek.  Whatever came of the matter, Artemisia would have to be separated from him.  He might never see her again, and the old Ethiopian loved her more than he did life itself.

“You will not wrong the girl when she is with you?” he whispered dolefully to Agias.

“I swear by Zeus she shall be treated as if she were my own dear sister,” was his reply.

“It is well.  I can trust you; but mu! mu! it is hard, it is hard!  I love her like my own eyes!  Isis preserve her dear life!”

And so at last Artemisia, having cried out all her first burst of grief, was beginning to smile once more.