“ ‘Not guilty’ votes the jury; the white beans prevail. So the letter goes to-day?”
“To-morrow afternoon. You know Seuthes of Corinth—the bow-legged fellow with a big belly. He goes home to-morrow afternoon after seeing the procession and the sacrifice.”
“He goes by sea?” asked Democrates, casually.
“By land; no ship went to his liking. He will lie overnight at Eleusis.”
The friends went their ways. Democrates hardly saw or heard anything until he was in his own chambers. Three [pg 109]things were graven on his mind: Sicinnus was watching, the Babylonian was suspected, Glaucon was implicated and was sending a letter to Argos.
* * * * * * *
Bias the Thracian was discovered that afternoon by his master lurking in a corner of the chamber. Democrates seized a heavy dog-whip, lashed the boy unmercifully, then cast him out, threatening that eavesdropping would be rewarded by “cutting into shoe soles.” Then the master resumed his feverish pacings and the nervous twisting of his fingers. Unfortunately, Bias felt certain the threat would never have been uttered unless the weightiest of matters had been on foot. As in all Greek dwellings, Democrates’s rooms were divided not by doors but by hanging curtains, and Bias, letting curiosity master fear, ensconced himself again behind one of these and saw all his master’s doings. What Democrates said and did, however, puzzled his good servant quite sufficiently.
Democrates had opened the privy cupboard, taken out one of the caskets and scattered its contents upon the table, then selected a papyrus, and seemed copying the writing thereon with extreme care. Next one of the clay seals came into play. Democrates was testing it upon wax. Then the orator rose, dashed the wax upon the floor, put his sandal thereon, tore the papyrus on which he wrote to bits. Again he paced restlessly, his hands clutching his hair, his forehead frowns and blackness, while Bias thought he heard him muttering as he walked:—
“O Zeus! O Apollo! O Athena! I cannot do this thing! Deliver me! Deliver!”
Then back to the table again, once more to pick up the mysterious clay, again to copy, to stamp on the wax, to fling down, mutilate, and destroy. The pantomime was [pg 110]gone through three times. Bias could make nothing of it. Since the day his parents—following the barbarous Thracian custom—had sold him into slavery and he had passed into Democrates’s service, the lad had never seen his master acting thus.