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But we carefully avoided every question, that could remind her of him she loved. In the delirium of fever, however, Bartja's name was always on her burning lips.

"Then go, Darius, and tell them to get your horse and Bartja's ready! To linger would be sin. Farewell Darius, perhaps forever! Protect Bartja! Once more, farewell!" It wanted two hours of midnight. Bright light was streaming through the open windows of Rhodopis' house, and sounds of mirth and gaiety fell on the ear. Her table had been adorned with special care in Croesus' honor.

Atossa ran to meet him; her eyes filled with tears as she took the tokens, and seating herself under a spreading plane-tree, she pressed them by turns to her lips, murmuring: "Bartja's ring means that he thinks of me; the blood-stained handkerchief that Darius is ready to shed his heart's blood for me."

Cambyses' looks grew milder on hearing these words, and when Oropastes suggested that an evil spirit must have taken Bartja's form to ruin him, he nodded assent and stretched out his hand towards Bartja. At this moment a staff-bearer came in and gave the king a dagger found by a eunuch under Nitetis' window.

The rose means, 'I love you, and the evergreen cypress, 'true and steadfast." The old man came back in an hour; bringing her Bartja's favorite ring, and from Darius an Indian handkerchief dipped in blood.

"Then go, Darius, and tell them to get your horse and Bartja's ready! To linger would be sin. Farewell Darius, perhaps forever! Protect Bartja! Once more, farewell!" It wanted two hours of midnight. Bright light was streaming through the open windows of Rhodopis' house, and sounds of mirth and gaiety fell on the ear. Her table had been adorned with special care in Croesus' honor.

"Menon, a cushion for our guest!" cried Rhodopis. "Be welcome to my house and take some repose after your wild, thoroughly Lydian, ride." "By the dog, Gyges!" exclaimed Croesus. Schol. Aristoph. "What brings thee here at this hour? I begged thee not to quit Bartja's side.... But how thou look'st! what is the matter? has aught happened? speak, speak!"

Verily, I would gladly give half my kingdom, to be convinced of the innocence of men so nearly related to me." "Victory to my lord, the eye of the realm! A Greek is waiting outside, who seems, to judge by his figure and bearing, one of the noblest of his race." The king laughed bitterly: "A Greek! Ah, ha! perhaps some relation to Bartja's faithful fair one!

Oropastes, therefore, sent for Prexaspes, who, since the king's dying words, had been avoided by all the men of his own rank and had led the life of an outlaw, and promised him an immense sum of money, if he would ascend a high tower and declare to the people, assembled in the court beneath, that evil-disposed men had called him Bartja's murderer, whereas he had seen the new king with his own eyes and had recognized in him the younger son of his benefactor.

They will also know how, on his death, Gaumata, the "pseudo-Smerdis" of the Greeks, was urged by his ambitious brother, Oropastes, to seize the throne by impersonating the dead Bartja; how, finally, the pretender was defeated and had to pay for his attempt with his life; and how Persia rose again to unity and greatness under the rule of the noble Darius, Bartja's faithful kinsman and friend.