“Cerberus eat me if that man has seen Cyprus. No Cyprian is so blond. The man is Xerxes’s brother.”
“We shall see, friend; we shall see: ‘Day by day we grow old, and day by day we grow wiser.’ So your own Solon puts it, I think.”
Democrates drew himself up angrily. “I know my duty; I’ll denounce you to Leonidas.”
“You gave a pledge and oath.”
“It were a greater crime to keep than to break it.”
Lycon shrugged his huge shoulders. “Eu! I hardly trusted to that. But I do trust to Hiram’s pretty story about your bets, and still more to a tale that’s told about where and how you’ve borrowed money.”
Democrates’s voice shook either with rage or with fear when he made shift to answer.
“I see I’ve come to be incriminated and insulted. So be it. If I keep my pledge, at least suffer me to wish you and your ‘Cyprian’ a very good night.”
Lycon good-humouredly lighted him to the door. “Why so hot? I’ll do you a service to-morrow. If Glaucon wrestles with me, I shall kill him.”
“Shall I thank the murderer of my friend?”