"Failure ought to be impossible. The houses of Hanno and thirty
of his party will be attacked, and the tyrants slain before any
alarm can be given. Another thirty at least should be slain before
the town is fairly aroused. Maybe each section can undertake three
if our plans are well laid, and each chooses for attack three
living near each other. We have not yet settled whether it will be
better to separate when this is done, content with the first blow
against our tyrants, or to prepare beforehand for a popular rising,
to place ourselves at the head of the populace, and to make a
clean sweep of the judges and the leaders of Hanno's party."

Giscon spoke in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone, as if he were
discussing the arrangements of a party of pleasure; but Malchus
could scarcely repress a movement of anxiety as he heard this proposal
for the wholesale destruction of the leading men of Carthage. The
council thus opened was continued for three hours. Most of those
present spoke, but, to the surprise of Malchus, there was an entire
absence of that gloom and mystery with which the idea of a state
conspiracy was associated in his mind.

The young men discussed it earnestly, indeed, but in the same
spirit in which they would have agreed over a disputed question
as to the respective merits of two horses. They laughed, joked,
offered and accepted wagers and took the whole matter with a
lightness of heart which Malchus imitated to the best of his power,
but which he was very far from feeling; and yet he felt that
beneath all this levity his companions were perfectly in earnest
in their plans, but they joked now as they would have joked before
the commencement of a battle in which the odds against them were