"Thou hast been my evil genius," he cried to Ariston, "but at any rate thou shalt go with me to the Styx."

He plunged his sword into the old man's side. Before he could withdraw it, a Thessalian blade cleft his skull. Murderer and victim fell together.

The storm had blown over. The sinking sun shone crimson upon the twisted clouds far across the sky. In the quarter where the Israelites dwelt, amid the mourning and rejoicing, Pethuel, the high priest, raised his hands to heaven.

"Give thanks to Jehovah!" he cried. "Our enemies have fallen and they that mocked Him are no more! Blessed be the name of the Lord!"

CHAPTER XLVIII

THAIS GIVES A FEAST

Down in the secret passage the fugitives from the Temple of Moloch could hear no sound of the battle. Leonidas had snatched one of the perfumed censers from the hand of a quaking neophyte, and this shed a glimmer of light as he led the way.

Artemisia came to her senses to find herself clasped in her lover's arms.

"Clearchus!" she murmured, "may the Gods grant that this be not a dream."

"It is no dream, my beloved!" the young man answered. "I have found thee at last."

"Dear heart, I have longed for thee so!" she said, with a little sigh of content, as her arms stole around his neck.

Clearchus bent his head, and their lips met in the darkness. Thais heard the murmur of their voices.

"Oh, I have lost my sandal--and I am cold!" she exclaimed, in a tone of distress. "Chares, I am afraid you will have to carry me."

"You are so heavy," the Theban said, taking her in his arms.

"There, be careful, sir, or I shall make you set me down again," she cried.

Leonidas uttered a sound that was something between a snort and a grunt and signified disdain, whereupon Chares laughed until the narrow passage rang.

Before they reached the palace it was in full possession of the Macedonians. They entered the room where the young men had left Azemilcus the night before, and found a portion of the squadron belonging to Leonidas busily searching there for plunder. The men stood open-mouthed when their captain appeared from behind the hangings. They looked like schoolboys caught in a forbidden frolic.

"Where is the king?" the Spartan demanded sternly.

"He is fighting down there," one of the soldiers replied, pointing from the window.

Leonidas glanced down upon the city and saw the conflict raging in the streets.

"Then what are you doing here?" he asked harshly. "Fall in!"

"I will go with you," Nathan said. "I must seek my people."

"You will find us here when you come back," Chares cried after them.

"We will fight no more to-day."

Leonidas overtook Alexander stamping out the last sparks of resistance in the northern part of the city. The young king, still glowing with the ardor of battle, greeted him with a smile.

"Are Clearchus and Chares safe?" he asked.

"They await you in the royal palace with Artemisia and Thais," the Spartan replied.

"Good!" Alexander cried. "This will have to be celebrated. Let us see what has become of Azemilcus."

He led the way to the Temple of Melkarth, which was filled with fugitives and suppliants. The general feeling in the city that the God was on the side of the Macedonians had led many to seek his protection when no other remained. Some of them were even striving to remove the chains with which the image had been bound to the pillars.

Azemilcus and the chancellor came forward, surrounded by the priests of the temple. The two kings, one withered and shrunken and old, his brain cankered by the cynical knowledge of experience, and the other, in the fulness of his vigorous youth and generous enthusiasms, looked into each other's eyes. Alexander's face was grave and stern, but the mocking smile still hovered about the lips of the older man.

"What have you to say?" Alexander said at last.

"I have been a king," Azemilcus replied, "but I am a king no longer.

What is your will?"

"You may live," Alexander replied coldly, "but you have never been a king. Where is your son?"

"He is dead," the old king answered, and his eyes wavered.

"I would rather be in his place than in thine," Alexander said shortly.

"Follow me."

Azemilcus shrugged his shoulders and gathered his robe more closely around him. To all who had sought refuge in the temple Alexander granted safety, and then, having issued the necessary orders regarding the city, he turned back to the palace.

The streets were encumbered with the dead. The bodies lay in heaps behind the broken barricades or scattered between them, where the fugitives had been stricken as they fled before the fury of the Macedonian charge. A wounded Tyrian raised himself on his elbow while the two kings passed, cursed Azemilcus, and died.

In the council room of the palace Alexander demanded from the chancellor an accounting of the public treasure of Tyre, an enormous sum in gold and silver, and gave it into the custody of his own treasurer. There, too, he received the reports of his captains, and with marvellous quickness despatched the business that they brought before him. The greater part of the army he ordered back to the camp on the mainland.

When nothing more remained to be done, he turned to Leonidas.

"Where are thy friends?" he asked. "They seem to have forgotten me."

"I will fetch them," the Spartan replied.

He ran to the apartment where he had left the lovers, and burst in, to find them nestled among the cushions, telling each other of all they had endured.

"Come," he cried. "The king has asked for you."

"Tell him that we will come presently," Chares said, but Thais promptly boxed his ears and slipped out of the arm that encircled her waist.

"I don't suppose there is a woman in the palace to smooth my hair," she exclaimed.

"Do you think Alexander will look at you?" Chares asked. "He has more important things to think about, indeed."

Nevertheless, Artemisia and Thais made Leonidas wait five minutes while they aided each other to make the best appearance possible under the circumstances, before they followed him to the great council chamber.

Artemisia entered shyly, casting down her eyes before the bold glances of so many men; but Thais walked beside Chares with head erect, her red lips parted in a smile, and a gleam of excitement dancing in her eyes.