“He fell in a popular brawl one day when I was away fishing.”
Nomion nodded with a look of satisfaction.
“I thought that you were absent,” he said.
Then, turning to his men, he shouted in a loud voice:
“This Cychrean and his wife are free. They can go where they list.”
XV.
The day was far advanced when Lyrcus and his wife reached Kranaai. Weighed down by the sin of murder, Byssa could not enter the places of general assembly and it was only with difficulty and by circuitous paths that she approached the house of her father, the priest Ariston.
The outer room was empty—Byssa entered and silently seated herself beside the hearth. Lyrcus thrust the bloody knife he had brought from the cave into the earth at her feet.
Then he turned to go; but ere he did so fixed his eyes on Byssa with a half-anxious, half-pitying look. He would gladly have extended his hand to her, uttered a word of encouragement. But he dared not. A fugitive murderer, until the rite of purification had been performed, was like a person plague-stricken.
Lyrcus silently departed. Byssa hid her face in her hands, tears trickled through her fingers.