His own, his very own! ...  He knew it well?  He had written it long ago in the hey-day of his youth when he had fancied all the world was waiting to be set to the music of his inspiration, . . he recognized every fancy, . . every couplet.. every rhyme! ...  The delicate glowing ballad was his, . .  His alone! ... and Sah-luma had no right to it!  He, Theos, was the Poet, . . not this royally favored Laureate who had stolen his deas and filched his jewels of thought...aye! and he would tell him so to his face! ... he would speak! ... he would cry aloud his claims in the presence of the King and demand instant justice! ... .

He strove for utterance,—­his voice was gone! ... his lips were moveless as the lips of a stone image!  Stricken absolutely mute, but with his sense of hearing quickened to an almost painful acuteness, he stood erect and motionless,—­rage and fear contending in his heart, enduring the torture of a truly terrific mystery of mind-despair, . . forced, in spite of himself, to listen passively to the love-thoughts of his own dead Past revived anew in his Rival’s singing!

CHAPTER XVI.

The prophet of doom.

A few slow, dreadful minutes elapsed, . . and then,—­then the first sharpness of his strange mental agony subsided.  The strained tension of his nerves gave way, and a dull apathy of grief inconsolable settled upon him.  He felt himself to be a man mysteriously accurst,—­banished as it were out of life, and stripped of all he had once held dear and valuable.  How had it happened?  Why was he set apart thus, solitary, poor, and empty of all worth, while another reaped the fruits of his genius? ...  He heard the loud plaudits of the assembled court shaking the vast hall as the Laureate ended his song—­and, drooping his head, some stinging tears welled up in his eyes and fell scorchingly on his clasped hands—­tears wrung from the very depth of his secretly tortured soul.  At that moment the beautiful Sah-luma turned toward him smiling, as one who looked for more sympathetic approbation than that offered by a mixed throng,—­and meeting that happy self-conscious, bland, half-inquiring gaze, he strove his best to return the smile.  Just then Zephoranim’s fiery glance swept over him with a curious expression of wonder and commiseration.

“By the gods, yon stranger weeps!” said the monarch in a half-bantering tone...then with more gentleness he added..  “Yet ’tis not the first time Sah-luma’s voice hath unsealed a fountain of tears!  No greater triumph can minstrel have than this,—­to move the strong man’s heart to woman’s tenderness!  We have heard tell of poets, who singing of death have persuaded many straightway to die,—­but when they sing of sweeter themes, of lover’s vows, of