"That is enough. I am pleased with your skill and promptness, and shall reward them," said the king, presenting his hand, which the artisan reverently touched with his lips.
King Hiram emerged from the network of streets and by-ways upon the Eurychorus Square, crossing which the royal palanquin disappeared beneath the portal of his palace. This was the residence of the ancient kings of Tyre. It was a large building, constructed of great blocks of stone, which were joined without mortar on smooth-fitting surfaces. About each stone was a depressed border, or bevel, which clearly marked the size of the blocks, making the whole more impressive to the eye, and at the same time revealing the antiquity of its construction. The edifice was windowless on the exterior. The only entrance was guarded by an enormous gate of oaken planks, which were banded together with thick and broad bars of burnished bronze. Pegs and sockets of the same metal made the hinges. It required the full strength of two burly porters to open these doors, for their great weight and the generations during which they had done service had worn the sockets into irregular shapes. As old Goliab, the porter, closed his half of the folding pair, and watched his comrade struggle with the other, he remarked:
"The hinges squeak like a howling priest. If they had not been used since the days of the Great Hiram, our king would order them to be taken off, and the new-fashioned ones put on."
"Hist, now!" replied his comrade. "They say that the king is going to stop the priests' howling first. The priests stick in the old ways they have worn for themselves, which, Baal save me! are not the ways the gods made when they lived in Tyre; and may be they lived in this same palace, for they do say that the first king was a god."
"Have a care!" rejoined Goliab. "I have seen many a priest watching this gate of late. Who knows but they will take it for a temple, and move in themselves?"
"Then I move out. I serve none less than the king. But have you read the proclamation, Goliab? I thank Astarte for never sending me any children to be burned to Moloch."
"That is not for such as we to talk about," replied Goliab.
"Why not?"
"Because," lowering his voice to a whisper, "there's a priest outside this moment. I can see his shadow through the crack under the gate."
The palanquin-bearers set down their royal burden in the court around which the palace was built. Hiram alighted by the fountain that rose in the centre and flung its spray over the beds of flowers which tastefully decorated the borders of its marble basin. He lingered a moment under an orange tree, whose silver blossoms and golden fruit, in simultaneous fulness, made him think of a proverb that was common everywhere in those lands famous for their orange groves: "A timely word is like golden fruit in a basket of silver." And then he thought of Hanno's words on the bireme. "Were they timely? Does Hanno know of dangers that I am ignorant of?"