Then Serapion had been right in saying this; and her hand trembled in her lover’s as she thought to herself that the danger which now threatened Philip was estrangement from the living through intercourse with the dead.  Her own dead mother, perhaps, had floated past among these wandering souls, and she grieved to think that she had neglected to look for her and give her a loving greeting.  Even Diodoros, who was not generally given to silent meditation, had his own thoughts to pursue; and so they walked on in silence till suddenly they heard a dull murmur of voices.  This startled them, and looking up they saw before them the rocky cliffs in which the Egyptians long since, and now in later times the Christians, had hewn caves and tombs.  From the door of one of these, only a few paces beyond where they stood, light streamed out; and as they were about to pass it a large dog barked.  Immediately on this a man came out, and in a rough, deep voice asked them the pass-word.  Diodoros, seized with sudden terror of the dark figure, which he believed to be a risen ghost, took to his heels, dragging Melissa with him.  The dog flew after them, barking loudly; and when the youth stooped to pick up a stone to scare him off, the angry brute sprang on him and dragged him down.

Melissa screamed for help, but the gruff voice angrily bade her be silent.  Far from obeying him, the girl shouted louder than ever; and now, out of the entrance to the cave, close behind the scene of the disaster, came a number of men with lamps and tapers.  They were the same daimons whose song she had heard in the street; she could not be mistaken.  On her knees, by the side of her lover as he lay on the ground, she stared up at the apparitions.  A stone flew at the dog to scare him off, and a second, larger than the first, whisked past her and hit Diodoros on the head; she heard the dull blow.  At this a cold hand seemed to clutch her heart; everything about her melted into one whirling, colorless cloud.  Pale as death, she threw up her arms to protect herself, and then, overcome with terror and fatigue, with a faint cry of anguish she lost consciousness.

When she opened her eyes again her head was resting in the lap of a kind, motherly woman, while some men were just bearing away the senseless form of Diodoros on a bier.

CHAPTER VI.

The sun had risen an hour since.  Heron had betaken himself to his workshop, whistling as he went, and in the kitchen his old slave Argutis was standing over the hearth preparing his master’s morning meal.  He dropped a pinch of dill into the barley-porridge, and shook his gray head solemnly.

His companion Dido, a Syrian, whose wavy white hair contrasted strangely with her dark skin, presently came in, and, starting up, he hastily inquired, “Not in yet?”

“No,” said the other woman, whose eyes were full of tears.  “And you know what my dream was.  Some evil has come to her, I am certain; and when the master hears of it—­” Here she sobbed aloud; but the slave reproved her for useless weeping.