Melas and the children pushed their way with the others, but the crowd
was so great and the movement so slow that when at last they got near the
sacred altars before the Erechtheum, the ceremonies were over and the air
was already filled with smoke and the smell of roasting meat.

It was late afternoon before the feasting was over, and, meanwhile, the
entire hill-top of the Acropolis was covered with moving crowds. As a
part of the festival, there were all sorts of games and side shows. Dion
and Daphne were so busy watching sword-swallowers, and tumblers, and men
performing all sorts of strange and wonderful tricks, they almost forgot
entirely the Gorgon's head with the snaky locks, which the Stranger had
told them about, and which Dion so much wished to see. Daphne was the
first to remember it.

"I'm going to see the new temple that Pericles is building over there.
Don't you want to see it, too?" said Melas to the Twins. "Where?" said
Dion. Melas pointed to a great heap of marble blocks toward the southern
side of the Acropolis. It was then that Daphne thought about the statue.

"Dion wants to see the Gorgon's head," she said.

"Well, then," answered Melas, "hurry up about it, for it is getting late
and we must soon be starting for your uncle's house."

The two children trotted away toward the great bronze statue near the
entrance without another word, and it was not until they were quite out
of sight that Melas remembered he had not told them where to meet him.

"I shall find them by the statue anyway," he said to himself, and went on
examining the foundations of the Parthenon.