trembling hand that he weighed out the juniper berries and cedar resin,
and he listened all the time with bated breath.

Presently there was a stir on the stairs, and the kitchen slaves shouted
that Caesar was coming. So he went out of the laboratory, which was
behind the stairs, to see what was going forward, and a turnspit at once
made way for the old man so as not to hinder his view.

Was that little young man, mounting the steps so gayly, with the high-
priest at his side and his suite at his heels, the dreadful monster who
had murdered his noble sons? He had pictured the dreadful tyrant quite
differently. Now Caesar was laughing, and the tall man next him made
some light and ready reply--the head cook said it was the Roman priest of
Alexander, who was not on good terms with Timotheus. Could they be
laughing at the high-priest? Never, in all the years he had known him,
had he seen Timotheus so pale and dejected.

The high-priest had indeed good cause for anxiety, for he suspected who
it was that Caesar hoped to find in the mystic rooms, and feared that his
wife might, in fact, have Melissa in hiding in that part of the building
to which he was now leading the way. After Macrinus had come to fetch
him he had had no opportunity of inquiring, for the prefect had not
quitted him for a moment, and Euryale was in the town busy with other
women in seeking out and nursing such of the wounded as had been found
alive among the dead.

Caesar triumphed in the changed, gloomy, and depressed demeanor of a man
usually so self-possessed; for he fancied that it betrayed some knowledge
on the part of Timotheus of Melissa's hiding-place; and he could jest
with the priest of Alexander and his favorite Theokritus and the other