A profound obscurity enveloped the wood of Daphne on all sides. A hot wind was hunting the clouds along. For days not a drop of rain had fallen on the cracked and arid earth. The laurels were shaking their black branches to heaven. The low roar of the cypresses in their titanic alleys was like the murmur of a crowd of angry old men.
Two persons were gliding cautiously through the shadow towards the Temple of Apollo. The smaller, who had green eyes like a cat, saw clearly through the night, and was leading the more stalwart by the hand.
"Oh! oh! you scoundrel! we shall break our necks in some ditch!"
"There is no ditch here! What are you afraid of? Since you adopted the new religion you've become a regular old woman!"
"An old woman!... When I used to hunt the bear my heart had never a throb the quicker! But here ... this isn't a job like that!... We shall swing for it, side by side, on the same gallows, my boy."
"Nonsense! Be quiet, you great fool!"
The small man again began dragging along the bigger, who carried an enormous truss of hay and a pickaxe.
They arrived at a postern door of the temple.
"Here, use the pick!" muttered the little man, groping with his hands for cracks in the stone. "And you can cut the cross-timbers with the axe...."
Suddenly there came a cry, like the complaint of a sick child. The tall man trembled in all his limbs—