“A spy!” “A malcontent!”

“Into the river with him!”

“He refuses worship!” “He denies the gods!”

“Bear him to the Tribunal!"..  And in a trice of time, he was completely surrounded and hemmed in by an exasperated, gesticulating crowd, whose ominous looks and indignant mutterings were plainly significant of prompt hostility.  With a few agile movements he succeeded in wrenching himself free from the grasp of his assailants, and standing among them like a stag at bay he cried: 

“What have I done?  How have I offended?  Speak!  Or is it the fashion of Al-Kyris to condemn a man unheard?”

No one answered this appeal,—­the very directness of it seemed to increase the irritation of the mob, that pressing closer and closer, began to jostle and hustle him in a threatening manner that boded ill for his safety,—­he was again taken prisoner, and struggling in the grasp of his captors, he was preparing to fight for his life as best he could, against the general fury, when the sound of musical strings, swept carelessly upwards in the ascending scale, struck sweetly through the clamor.  A youth, arrayed in crimson, and carrying a small golden harp, marched sedately between the serried ranks that parted right and left at his approach,—­thus clearing the way for another personage who followed him,—­a graceful, Adonis-like personage in glistening white attire, who wore a myrtle-wreath on his dark, abundant locks, and whom the populace—­forgetting for a moment the cause of their recent disturbance—­greeted with a ringing and ecstatic shout of “Hail!  Sah-luma!”

Again and again this cry was uplifted, till far away on the extreme outskirts of the throng the joyous echo of it was repeated faintly yet distinctly ...  “Hail!  Hail, Sah-luma!”

CHAPTER XII.

Sah-luma.

The new-comer thus enthusiastically welcomed bowed right and left, with a condescending air, in response to the general acclamation, and advancing to the spot where Theos stood, an enforced prisoner in the close grip of three or four able-bodied citizens, he said: 

“What turbulence is here?  By my faith! ... when I heard the noise of quarrelsome contention jarring the sweetness of this nectarous noon, methought I was no longer in Al-Kyris, but rather in some western city of barbarians where music is but an unvalued name!”

And he smiled—­a dazzling, child-like smile, half petulant, half-pleased—­a smile of supreme self-consciousness as of one who knew his own resistless power to charm away all discord.

Several voices answered him in clamorous unison: 

“A traitor, Sah-luma!” “A profane rebel!” ...  “An unbeliever!” ...  “A most insolent knave!”—­“He refused homage to the High Priestess!” ...  “A renegade from the faith!”

“Now, by the Sacred Veil!” cried Sah-luma impatiently—­“Think ye I can distinguish your jargon, when like ignorant boors ye talk all at once, tearing my ears to shreds with such unmelodious tongue-clatter!  Whom have ye seized thus roughly? ...  Let him stand forth!”