clamour ceased in an instant. The party rose, as by a general impulse,
and crowded round the new comer.

"My friends," said he, regarding them with the same calm and frigid
indifference which usually characterised his demeanour, "you do well
to make merry while you may, for something tells me it will not last
long. We shall return to Lacedaemon. You look black. So, then, is
there no delight in the thought of home?"

"_Home!_" muttered one of the Helots, and the word, sounding drearily
on his lips, was echoed by many, so that it circled like a groan.

"Yet ye have your children as much as if ye were free," said Alcman.

"And for that reason it pains us to see them play, unaware of the
future," said a Helot of better mien than his comrades.

"But do you know," returned the Mothon, gazing on the last speaker
steadily, "that for your children there may not be a future fairer
than that which your fathers knew?"

"Tush!" exclaimed one of the unhappy men, old before his time, and
of an aspect singularly sullen and ferocious. "Such have been your
half-hints and mystic prophecies for years. What good comes of them?
Was there ever an oracle for Helots?"

"There was no repute in the oracles even of Apollo," returned Alcman,
"till the Apollo-serving Dorians became conquerors. Oracles are the
children of victories."