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The rising color in Leonidas's face was apparently a sufficient answer to the stranger, for he continued smilingly, "Then permit me to introduce myself as Mr. James Belcher. As you perceive, I have grown considerably since you last saw me. In fact, I've done nothing else. It's surprising what a fellow can do when he sets his mind on one thing.
There remained but one cause that might be alleged for Leonidas's unwillingness to let them go, to wit, that they might die with him; and this our historian himself has taken away, writing thus of Leonidas's ambition: "Leonidas, considering these things, and desirous that this glory might redound to the Spartans alone, sent away his confederates rather for this than because they differed in their opinions."
"I I" she began, with charming hesitation; then suddenly, "What's your name?" "Leonidas." "Leonidas! That's a pretty name!" He thought it DID sound pretty. "Well, Leonidas, I want you to be a good boy and do a great favor for me, a very great favor." Leonidas's face fell. This kind of prelude and formula was familiar to him.
"You are going to do me another great favor, and we are going to have a little fun and a great secret all by our own selves. Now, first, have you any correspondent you know any one who writes to you any boy or girl from San Francisco?" Leonidas's cheeks grew redder alas! from a less happy consciousness. He never received any letters; nobody ever wrote to him.
But if you want my certificate, here's your own letter, old man," he said, producing Leonidas's last scrawl from his pocket. "And HERS?" said the boy cautiously. The stranger's face changed a little. "And HERS," he repeated gravely, showing a little pink note which Leonidas recognized as one of Mrs. Burroughs's inclosures.
There was no question of moral ethics raised in Leonidas's mind; he knew that it would not be the real Jim Belcher who would write to him, but that made the prospect the more attractive. Nor did another circumstance trouble his conscience. When he reached the post-office, he was surprised to see the man whom he knew to be Mr. Burroughs talking with the postmaster.
But Herodotus makes the Greeks contriving to fly before they heard anything of Leonidas's death. For thus he says: "But they having been ill-treated, and especially the Athenians, half of whose ships were sorely shattered, consulted to take their flight into Greece."
Now the Spartans had no tangible proof against him neither his enemies nor the nation of that indubitable kind required for the punishment of a member of the royal family, and at that moment in high office; he being regent for his first cousin King Pleistarchus, Leonidas's son, who was still a minor.
It is needless to say that, without any extraneous thought, the man suffered in Leonidas's estimation by his propinquity to the goddess, and that he deemed him vastly inferior. It was a still greater reward to his fidelity that she seized an opportunity when her husband's head was turned to wave her hand to him.
Yon sculptured lion, frowning near, Points out Leonidas's bier.
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