away with you. Up hill and down dale you go, through Scythia and
Machlyene, off again to Bosphorus, then back to Scythia, till my
taciturnity is exhausted.

_Tox_. I am schooled. Brevity you shall have; I will not run
you off your ears this time. My next story shall be of a service
rendered to myself, by my friend Sisinnes. Induced by the desire
for Greek culture, I had left my home and was on my way to Athens.
The ship put in at Amastris, which comes in the natural route from
Scythia, being on the shore of the Euxine, not far from Carambis.
Sisinnes, who had been my friend from childhood, bore me company on
this voyage. We had transferred all our belongings from the ship to
an inn near the harbour; and whilst we were busy in the market,
suspecting nothing wrong, some thieves had forced the door of our
room and carried off everything, not leaving us even enough to go
on with for that day. Well, when we got back and found what had
happened, we thought it was no use trying to get legal redress from
our landlord, or from the neighbours; there were too many of them;
and if we _had_ told our story,--how we had been robbed of
four hundred darics and our clothes and rugs and everything, most
people would only have thought we were making a fuss about a
trifle. So we had to think what was to be done: here we were,
absolutely destitute, in a foreign country. For my part, I thought
I might as well put a sword through my ribs there and then, and
have done with it, rather than endure the humiliation that might be
forced upon us by hunger and thirst. Sisinnes took a more cheerful
view, and implored me to do nothing of the kind: 'I shall think of
something,' he said, 'and we may do well yet.' For the moment, he
made enough to get us some food by carrying up timber from the
harbour. The next morning, he took a walk in the market, where it