The giant reflected aloud,
“I won five thousand yesterday; from the Roman one—six. Give me four, good Arrius—four more—and I will stand firm for you, though old Thor, my namesake, strike me with his hammer. Make it four, and I will kill the lying patrician, if you say so. I have only to cover his mouth with my hand—thus.”
He illustrated the process by clapping his hand over his own mouth.
“I see,” said Ben-Hur; “ten thousand sestertii is a fortune. It will enable you to return to Rome, and open a wine-shop near the Great Circus, and live as becomes the first of the lanistae.”
The very scars on the giant’s face glowed afresh with the pleasure the picture gave him.
“I will make it four thousand,” Ben-Hur continued; “and in what you shall do for the money there will be no blood on your hands, Thord. Hear me now. Did not your friend here look like me?”
“I would have said he was an apple from the same tree.”
“Well, if I put on his tunic, and dress him in these clothes of mine, and you and I go away together, leaving him here, can you not get your sestertii from Messala all the same? You have only to make him believe it me that is dead.”
Thord laughed till the tears ran into his mouth.
“Ha, ha, ha! Ten thousand sestertii were never won so easily. And a wine-shop by the Great Circus!—all for a lie without blood in it! Ha, ha, ha! Give me thy hand, O son of Arrius. Get on now, and—ha, ha, ha!—if ever you come to Rome, fail not to ask for the wine-shop of Thord the Northman. By the beard of Irmin, I will give you the best, though I borrow it from Cæsar!”