The priests struggled like brave men to the last.  They grasped their hideous foes by arm and limb and neck, and tossed some of them back upon their fellows; fighting desperately with their bare hands against the armed murderers.  But the foe were a hundred to one, and the priests fell in heaps upon each other while the blood flowed out between the feet of the wild, surging throng, who yelled and slew, and yelled again, as each priest tottered back and fell, with the death-wound in his breast.

At last, one tall wretch, with bloodied eyes and distorted features, leaped across a heap of slain and laid hold of Nehushta by the hair with his reeking hand, and strove to drag her out.  But Zoroaster’s thin arms went round her like lightning and clasped her to his breast.  Then the little Syrian maid raised her Indian knife, with both hands, high above her head, and smote the villain with all her might beneath the fifth rib, that he died in the very act; but ere he had fallen, a sharp blade fell swiftly, like a crooked flash of light, and severed the small hands at the wrist; and the brave, true-hearted little maid fell shrieking to the floor.  One shriek—­and that was all; for the same sword smote her again as she lay, and so she died.

But Nehushta’s head fell forward on the high priest’s breast, and her arms clasped him wildly as his clasped her.

“Oh, Zoroaster, my beloved, my beloved!  Say not any more that I am unfaithful, for I have been faithful even unto death, and I shall be with you beyond the stars for ever!”

He pressed her closer still, and in that awful moment, his white face blazed with the radiant light of the new life that comes by death alone.

“Beyond the stars and for ever!” he cried.  “In the light of the glory of God most high!”

The keen sword flashed out once more and severed Nehushta’s neck, and found its sheath in her lover’s heart; and they fell down dead together, and the slaughter was done.

But on the third day, Darius the king returned; for a messenger met him, bringing news that his soldiers had slain the rebels in Echatana, though they were ten to one.  And when he saw what things had been done in Stakhar, and looked upon the body of the wife he had loved, lying clasped in the arms of his most faithful and beloved servant, he wept most bitterly.  And he rode forth and destroyed utterly the wild riders of the eastern hills, and left not one child to weep for its father that was dead.  But two thousand of them he brought to Stakhar, and crucified them all upon the roadside, that their blood might avenge the blood of those he had loved so well.

And he took the bodies of Zoroaster the high priest, and of Nehushta the queen, and of the little Syrian maid, and he buried them with spices and fine linen, and in plates of pure gold, together in a tomb over against the palace, hewn in the rock of the mountain.