“Who are you?”
The blood leaped into the Athenian’s cheeks. The tongue that had wagged so nimbly clove in his mouth. He grew silent.
“Who are you?”
As the question was repeated, the scrutiny grew yet closer. The soldiers were pressing around, one comrade leaning over another’s shoulder. Twenty saw the fugitive’s form straighten as he stood in the morning twilight.
“I am Glaucon of Athens, Isthmionices!”
“Ah!” Leonidas’s jaw dropped for an instant. He showed no other astonishment, but the listening Spartans raised a yell.
“Death! Stone the traitor!”
Leonidas, without a word, smote the man nearest to him with a spear butt. The soldiers were silent instantly. Then the chief turned back to the deserter.
“Why here?”
Glaucon had never prayed for the gifts of Peitho, “Our Lady Persuasion,” more than at that crucial moment. Arguments, supplications, protestations of innocence, curses upon his unknown enemies, rushed to his lips together. He hardly realized what he himself said. Only he knew that at the end the soldiers did not tug at their hilts as before and scowl so threateningly, and Leonidas at last lifted his hand as if to bid him cease.