He sprang down the steps of the loggia, accompanied by Theos, who was equally excited,—­when all at once Zabastes, thrusting out his head through a screen of vine-leaves, cried after them: 

“Sah-luma!—­Most illustrious!  What of the poem?  It is not finished!”

“No matter!” returned Sah-luma—­“’Twill be finished hereafter!”

And he hastened on, Theos treading close in his footsteps and thinking as he went of the new enigma thus proposed to puzzle afresh the weary workings of his mind.  His poem of Nourhalma—­ or rather the poem he had fancied was his—­had been entirely completed down to the last line; now Sah-luma’s was left “To be finished hereafter.”

Strange that he should find a pale glimmering of consolation in this!—­a feeble hope that perhaps after all, at some future time, he might be able to produce a few, a very few lines of noble verse that should be deemed purely original! ... enough perchance, to endow him with a faint, far halo of diminished glory such as plodding students occasionally win, by following humbly yet ardently ... even as he now followed Sah-luma ... in the paths of excellence marked out by greater men!

CHAPTER XXIV.

The fall of the obelisk.

In less time than he could have imagined possible, he found himself in the densely crowded Square, buffeting and struggling against an angry and rebellious mob, who half resentful and half terrified, had evidently set themselves to resist the determined charge made by the mounted soldiery into their midst.  For once Sah-luma’s appearance created no diversion,—­he was pushed and knocked about as unceremoniously as if he were the commonest citizen of them all, He seemed carelessly surprised at this, but nevertheless took his hustling very good humoredly, and, keeping his shoulders well squared forced his way with Theos by slow degrees through the serried ranks of people, many of whom, roused to a sort of frenzy threw themselves in front of the advancing horses of the guard, and seizing the reins held on to these like grim death, reckless of all danger.

As yet no weapons were used either by the soldiers or the populace,—­the former seemed for the present contented to simply ride down those who impeded their progress,—­and that they had done so in terrible earnest was plainly evident from the numbers of wounded creatures that lay scattered about on every side in an apparently half dying condition.  Yet there was surely a strange insensibility to suffering among them all, inasmuch as in spite of the contention and confusion there were no violent shrieks of either pain or fury,—­no exclamations of rage or despair,—­no sound whatever indeed, save a steady, sullen, monotonous snarl of opposition, above which the resonant voice of the Prophet Khosrul rang out like a silver clarion.