“What is this that thou sayest?” asked Daniel, starting forward from his reclining position, and fixing his dark eyes on Zoroaster.  “Will the king take away from me the children of my old age?  Art not thou as my son?  And is not Nehushta as my daughter?  As for the rest, I care not if they go.  But Nehushta is as the apple of my eye!  She is as a fair flower growing in the desert of my years!  What is this that the king hath done to me?  Whither will he take her from me?”

“Let not my lord be troubled,” said Zoroaster, earnestly, for he was moved by the sudden grief of the prophet.  “Let not my lord be troubled.  It is but for a space, for a few weeks; and thy kinsfolk will be with thee again, and I also.”

“A space, a few weeks!  What is a space to thee, child, or a week that thou shouldest regard it?  But I am old and full of years.  It may be, if now thou takest my daughter Nehushta from me, that I shall see her face no more, neither thine, before I go hence and return not.  Go to!  Thou art young, but I am now nigh unto a hundred years old.”

“Nevertheless, if it be the will of the Great King, I must accomplish this thing,” answered the young man.  “But I will swear by thy head and by mine that there shall no harm happen to the young princess; and if anything happen to her that is evil, may the Lord do so to me and more also.  Behold, I have sworn; let not my lord be troubled any more.”

But the prophet bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.  Aged and childless, Zoroaster and Nehushta were to him children, and he loved them with his whole soul.  Moreover, he knew the Persian Court, and he knew that if once they were taken into the whirl and eddy of its intrigue and stirring life, they would not return to Ecbatana; or returning, they would be changed and seem no more the same.  He was bitterly grieved and hurt at the thought of such a separation, and in the grand simplicity of his greatness he felt no shame at shedding tears for them.  Zoroaster himself, in the pride of his brilliant youth, was overcome with pain at the thought of quitting the sage who had been a father to him for thirty years.  He had never been separated from Daniel save for a few months at a time during the wars of Cambyses; at six-and-twenty years of age he had been appointed to the high position of captain of the fortress of Ecbatana; since which time he had enjoyed the closest intercourse with the prophet, his master.

Zoroaster was a soldier by force of circumstances, and he wore his gorgeous arms with matchless grace, but there were two things that, with him, went before his military profession, and completely eclipsed it in importance.