As if in a dream he saw Scythians and other guardians of the peace seize Antyllus, while Caesarion was struggling on the ground with another man.  If he was not mistaken it was Dion, Barine’s betrothed husband.

These communications were interrupted by many exclamations of impatience and wrath; but now Didymus, fairly frantic with alarm, cried: 

“And the child—­Barine?”

But when Philotas’s sole reply to this question was a silent shake of the head, indignation conquered the old philosopher, and clutching his pupil’s chiton with both hands, he shook him violently, exclaiming furiously: 

“You don’t know, scoundrel?  Instead of defending her who should be dear to you as a child of this household, you joined the rascally scorners of morality and law as the accomplice of this waylayer in purple!”

Here the architect soothed the enraged old man with expostulations, and the assertion that everything must now yield to the necessity of searching for Barine and Dion.  He did not know which way to turn, in the amount of labour pressing upon him, but he would have a hasty talk with the foreman and then try to find his friend.

“And I,” cried the old man, “must go at once to the unfortunate child.-My cloak, Phryx, my sandals!”

In spite of Gorgias’s counsel to remember his age and the inclement weather, he cried angrily: 

“I am going, I say!  If the tempest hurls me to the earth, and the bolts of Zeus strike me, so be it.  One misfortune more or less matters little in a life which has been a chain of heavy blows of Fate.  I buried three sons in the prime of manhood, and two have been slain in battle.  Barine, the joy of my heart, I myself, fool that I was, bound to the scoundrel who blasted her joyous existence; and now that I believed she would be protected from trouble and misconstruction by the side of a worthy husband, these infamous rascals, whose birth protects them from vengeance, have wounded, perhaps killed her betrothed lover.  They trample in the dust her fair name and my white hair!—­Phryx, my hat and staff.”

The storm had long been raging around the house, which stood close by the sea, and the sailcloth awning which was stretched over the impluvium noisily rattled the metal rings that confined it.  Now so violent a gust swept from room to room that two of the flames in the three-branched lamp went out.  The door of the house had been opened, and drenched with rain, a hood drawn over his black head, Barine’s Nubian doorkeeper crossed the threshold.

He presented a pitiable spectacle and at first could find no answer to the greetings and questions of the men, who had been joined by Helena, her grandmother leaning on her arm; his rapid walk against the fury of the storm had fairly taken away his breath.

He had little, however, to tell.  Barine merely sent a message to her relatives that, no matter what tales rumour might bring, she and her mother were unhurt.  Dion had received a wound in the shoulder, but it was not serious.  Her grandparents need have no anxiety; the attack had completely failed.