“Themistocles’s seal,” he cried, and hastily turned the fallen man’s face upward to the light, when the lantern almost dropped from his own hand.
“Glaucon the Alcmæonid! Glaucon the Traitor who was dead! He or his shade come back from Tartarus.”
The four soldiers stood quaking like aspen, but their leader was of stouter stuff. Never had his native Attic shrewdness guided him to more purpose.
“Ghost, traitor, what not, this man has run himself all but to death. Look on his face. And Themistocles does not send a courier for nothing. This packet is for Aristeides, and to Aristeides take it with speed.”
Hippon seized the papyrus. He thought it would fade out of his hands like a spectre. It did not. The sentinel dropped his spear and ran breathless toward Platæa, where he knew was his general.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE COUNCIL OF MARDONIUS
Never since Salamis had Persian hopes been higher than that night. What if the Spartans were in the field at last, and the incessant skirmishing had been partly to Pausanias’s advantage? Secure in his fortified camp by the Asopus, Mardonius could confidently wait the turn of the tide. His light Tartar cavalry had cut to pieces the convoys bringing provisions to the Hellenes. Rumour told that Pausanias’s army was ill fed, and his captains were at loggerheads. Time was fighting for Mardonius. A joyful letter he had sent to Sardis the preceding morning: “Let the king have patience. In forty days I shall be banqueting even in Sparta.”