“It is like you, O hasty and misjudging Kyrisians, that finding a harmless wanderer from far off lands, present at the pageant of the Midsummer Benediction, ye should pounce upon him, even as kites on a straying sea-bird, and maul him with your ruthless talons!  Has he broken the law of worship!  Ye have broken the law of hospitality!  Has he failed to kneel to the passing Ship of the Sun?  So have ye failed to handle him with due courtesy!  What report shall he bear hence of your gentleness and culture to those dim and unjoyous shores beyond the gray green wall of ocean-billows, where the very name of Al-Kyris serves as a symbol for all that is great and wise and wondrous in the whole round circle of the world?  Moreover ye know full well that foreigners and sojourners in the city are exempt from worship,—­and the King’s command is that all such should be well and nobly entertained, to the end that when they depart they may carry with them a full store of pleasant memories.  Hence, scatterbrains, to your homes!—­ No festival can ye enjoy without a gust of contention!—­ye are ill-made instruments all, whose jarring strings even I, crowned Minstrel of the King, can scarce keep one day in happy tune!  Look you now! ... this stranger is my guest!—.  Is there a man in Al-Kyris who will treat as an enemy one whom Sah-luma calls friend?”

A storm of applause followed this little extempore speech,—­ applause accompanied by an odorous rain of flowers.  There were many women in the crowd, and these had pressed eagerly forward to catch every word that dropped from the Poet-Laureate’s mellifluous lips,—­now, moved by one common impulse, they hastily snatched off their posies and garlands, and flung them in lavish abundance at his feet.  Some of the blossoms chancing to fall on Theos and cling to his garments, he quickly shook them off, and gathering them together, presented them to the personage for whom they were intended.  He, however, gayly rejected them, moving his small sandalled foot playfully among the thick wealth of red and white roses that lay waiting to be crushed beneath his tread.

“Keep thy share!” he said, with an amused flash of his glorious eyes.  “Such offerings are my daily lot! ...  I can spare thee one handful from the overflowing harvest of my song!”

It was impossible to be offended with such charming self-complacency,—­the naive conceit of the man was as harmless as the delight of a fair girl who has made her first conquest, and Theos smiling, kept the flowers.  By this time the surrounding throng had broken up into little knots and groups,—­all ill-humor on the part of the populace had completely vanished,—­and large numbers were now leaving the embankment and dispersing in different directions to their several homes.  All those who had been within hearing distance of Sah-luma’s voice appeared highly elated, as though they had enjoyed some special privilege and pleasure, ... to be reproved by the Laureate was evidently considered better than