“A courteous letter of thanks to Ageladas.” The senior statesman was frowning. “Glaucon is right. Either you are turned mad, or are victim of some prank,—is it yours, Cimon?”
“I am as innocent as a babe. I’d swear it by the Styx,” responded that young man, scratching his muddled head.
“I fear we are not at the end of the examination,” observed Democrates, with ominous slowness. “Now, Seuthes, recollect your plight. Have you no other letter about you?”
“None!” groaned the unheroic Corinthian. “Ah! pity, kind sirs; what have I done? Suffer me to go.”
“It is possible,” remarked his prosecutor, “you are an innocent victim, or at least do not realize the intent of what you bear. I must examine the lining of your chalmys. Nothing. Your girdle. Nothing. Your hat, remove it. Quite empty. Blessed be Athena if my fears prove groundless. But my first duty is to Athens and Hellas. Ah! Your high boots. Remove the right one.” The orator felt within, and shook the boot violently. “Nothing again. The left one, empty it seems. Ei! what is this?”
In a tense silence he shook from the boot a papyrus, rolled and sealed. It fell on the floor at the feet of Themistocles, [pg 131]who, watching all his lieutenant did, bent and seized it instantly; then it dropped from his hands as a live coal.
“The seal! The seal! May Zeus smite me blind if I see aright!”
Hermippus, who had been following all the scene in silence, bent, lifted the fateful paper, and he too gave a cry of grief.
“It is the seal of Glaucon. How came it here?”
“Glaucon,”—hard as Democrates’s voice had been that night, it rang like cold iron now,—“as the friend of your boyhood, and one who would still do for you all he may, I urge you as you love me to look upon this seal.”