his difficult progress, clasping Sah-luma’s corpse with a strange tenacity, and concentrating all his attention on protecting it from the withering touch of the ravenous flames.  All at once,—­as he strove to force his way over a fallen altar from which the hideous presiding stone idol had toppled headlong, killing in its descent some twenty or thirty people whose bodies lay crushed beneath it,—­a face horribly disfigured and tortured into a mere burnt sketch of its former likeness twisted itself up and peered at him, the face of Zabastes, the Critic.  His protruding eyes glistened with something of their old malign expression as he perceived whose helpless form it was that was being carried by.

“What! ... is the famous Sah-luma gone?” he gasped, his words half choking him in their utterance as he stretched out a skinny hand and caught at Theos’s garments ...  “Good youth, stay! ...  Stay! ...  Why burden thyself with a corpse when thou mightest rescue a living man?  Save me! ...  Save me! ...  I was the Poet’s adverse Critic, and who but I should write his Eulogy now that he is no more! ...  Pity! ...  Pity, most courteous, gentle sir! ...  Save me if only for the sake of Sah-luma’s future honor!  Thou knowest not how warmly, how generously, how nobly, I can praise the dead!”

Theos gazed down upon him in unspeakable, melancholy scorn, . . was it only through time-serving creatures such as this miserable Zabastes, that the after-glory of perished poets was proclaimed to the world? ...  What then was the actual worth of Fame?

Shuddering, he wrenched himself away, and passed on silently, heedless of the savage curses the despairing scribe yelled after him as he went, and he involuntarily pressed the dead corpse of his beloved friend closer to his heart, as though he thought he could re-animate it by this mute expression of tenderness!  Meanwhile the fire raged continuously,—­the Temple was fast becoming a pillared mass of flames, . . and presently,—­choked and giddy with the sulphurous vapors—­he stopped abruptly, struggling for breath.  His time had come at last, he thought, . . he with Sah-luma must die!

Just then a loud muttering and rolling of thunder swept in eddying vibrations round him, followed by a sharp, splitting noise, . . raising his aching eyes, he saw straight before him, a yawning gloomy archway, like the solemn portal of a funeral vault.. dark, yet with a white glimmer of steps leading outward, and a dim sparkle as of stars in heaven.  A rush of new vigor inspired him at this sight, and he resumed his way, stumbling over countless corpses strewn among fallen blocks of marble,—­and every now and then looking back in awful fascination to the fiery furnace of the body of the Temple, where of all the vast numbers that had lately crowded it from end to end, there were only a hundred or so remaining alive,—­and these were fast perishing in frightful agony.  The Shrine of Nagaya was enveloped in thick black smoke,