"Yes, yes, my pugnacity costs me very dear sometimes. But to our story.
As soon as Bartja had opened his eyes, Gyges sent me off to Sardis to
fetch a good physician and an easy travelling-carriage. That ride won't
so soon be imitated. An hour before I reached the gates my third horse
knocked up under me, so I had to trust to my own legs, and began running
as fast as I could. The people must all have thought me mad. At last I
saw a man on horseback--a merchant from Kelaenze--dragged him from his
horse, jumped into the saddle, and, before the next morning dawned, I was
back again with our invalid, bringing the best physician in Sardis, and
Oroetes' most commodious travelling-carriage. We brought him to this
house at a slow footpace, and here a violent fever came on, he became
delirious, talked all the nonsense that could possibly come into a human
brain, and made us so awfully anxious, that the mere remembrance of that
time brings the big drops of perspiration to my forehead."

Bartja took his friend's hand: "I owe my life to him and Gyges," said he,
turning to Darius. "Till to-day, when they set out to meet you, they
have never left me for a minute; a mother could not have nursed her sick
child more carefully. And Oroetes, I am much obliged to you too; doubly
so because your kindness subjected you to annoyance."

"How could that be?" asked Darius.

"That Polykrates of Samos, whose name we heard so often in Egypt, has the
best physician that Greece has ever produced. While I was lying here
ill, Oroetes wrote to this Democedes, making him immense promises, if he
would only come to Sardis directly. The Sainian pirates, who infest the
whole Ionian coast, took the messenger captive and brought Oroetes'
letter to their master Polykrates. He opened it, and sent the messenger
back with the answer, that Democedes was in his pay, and that if Oroetes