“And I will kill you too if you won’t tell the truth!” thundered Pratinas, in an ungovernable passion.  Agias heard a blow as of a clinched fist, and a low moan.  It was enough.  One spring, and the ponderous cover flew back.  The toga, the innocent cause of the catastrophe, lay on the chair close at hand.  Agias grasped the whole picture in a twinkling:  Sesostris lying beside a heavy wooden bench, with blood flowing from a great wound in his head which had struck in falling on a sharp corner; Artemisia crying in unspeakable dread on a divan; Pratinas, his face black as night, with uplifted hand prepared to strike a second time.  Agias saw; and while he saw acted.  Down over Pratinas’s head dashed the broad linen folds of the toga, and two muscular arms drew it tight around the neck.  Then began the struggle.  Pratinas was of powerful physique, and resisted like a madman.  The carpet was torn to shreds, the chairs shivered.  But Agias, too, battled for grim life.  He kept the hood over his opponent’s eyes and never gave Pratinas a glimpse of the identity of his assailant.  And at last a life of debauches and late dinners and unhealthy excitement began to tell against even so powerful a constitution as that of Pratinas.  Tighter and tighter grew the pressure around his neck.  And now Artemisia sprang up, and flew like a tiny tigress to her lover’s assistance, and caught at her tormentor’s hands, tearing them with her white little teeth, and pulling the enveloping mantle closer and closer.  The contest could only have one end.  Ere long, Pratinas was lying on the floor, bound hand and foot with strings of torn clothing, and his head still muffled in the toga.  Agias, victorious, but with not a whole rag on his back, rose from his contest.

“Sesostris! help him!” cried Artemisia, trying in vain to get some response from the motionless form by the bench.  Agias looked at the Ethiop.  The hard wood had struck the top of his skull, and death must have been instantaneous.

“He does not feel any pain,” explained the young Greek, who realized that this was no moment to indulge in emotions of any sort.  “Now, Artemisia, you must hurry and put on a clean dress yourself; and give me at least a new tunic, for I cannot show this on the streets.  Put into a basket all the bread you have, and some oil, and some olives, and some slices of salt fish.”

Artemisia disappeared in the next room.  Agias returned to his prisoner.  Pratinas was coughing and twisting, and trying to ejaculate oaths.

“My good sir,” said Agias, “I am not a bloodthirsty man, otherwise I would cut your throat, and so let you forget a predicament which doubtless embarrasses you not a little.  But, since that is not to be, do not blame me if I arrange so that it will be unlikely that two such cold friends as you and myself will ever meet again.  First of all, that purse which is at your side, and which, by its weight, shows that it contains a fair night’s