“It’s like a tower in a fairy tale. The kind of tower a magician builds, you know!” declared Rachel, at last.
“But what is it for?” added Diana, after a moment.
“It is a tomb, little maid.”
“A tomb?” echoed Diana. “All that great big beautiful place only for a tomb?”
“The great Pyramid was a tomb,” Rachel told her in an aside, “and that’s bigger, you know. Whose tomb is it?” she went on.
“Would you hear the whole story? I am here to tell it, if that should be your wish. Let us then rest in the shade of these cypress trees while you listen.”
Their guide lay down and stretched his beautiful body at full length on the soft turf, while the children, with their hands clasped round their knees, sat facing him, eagerly waiting for him to speak.
“I cannot, O little maidens,” he began, “relate to you the history of this magnificent tomb without telling you something of my own story, which is in a way bound up with it. Already it must be clear to you that I am no ordinary horse. The time has now arrived when I may reveal my name. Know, then, that I am no other than Bucephalus, the famous steed of the greatest conqueror in the world, Alexander the Great.
“I was born in Greece, but when I was still very young, I was sent as a gift to the King of Macedonia, a country bordering upon my native land. As yet, no man had ridden me, and being young and untried, I was so impatient of control that when the king would have mounted upon my back, I reared and plunged, lashing out with my hind legs in a fashion so dangerous and unseemly that no one might approach me.