"I, Dagon, congratulate thee, Lord Hiram, and I wish thee the same as thou wishest me--"

"Dost thou desire to dispute?" interrupted Hiram, irritated.

"How dispute? Rabsun, say if I am disputing."

"Better talk of business, your worthinesses," replied the host.

After a moment of thought Hiram proceeded,--

"Thy friends in Tyre congratulate thee greatly through me."

"Is that all they have sent me?" asked Dagon, in reviling accents.

"What didst thou wish?" inquired Hiram, raising his voice.

"Quiet! Concord!" put in the host.

Hiram sighed a number of times deeply, and said,--

"It is true that we need concord. Evil times are approaching Phnicia."

"Has the sea flooded Tyre and Sidon?" asked Dagon, smiling.

Hiram spat, and inquired,--

"Why art thou so ill-tempered to-day?"

"I am always ill-tempered when men do not call me worthiness."

"But why dost thou not say grace to me? I am a prince."

"Perhaps in Phnicia. But in a.s.syria thou wouldst wait three days in the forecourt of any satrap for an audience, and when he deigned to receive thee thou wouldst be lying on thy belly, like any Phnician merchant."

"But what couldst thou do in presence of a wild man who would perhaps impale thee on a stake?" inquired Hiram.

"What I would do, I know not. But in Egypt I sit on one sofa with the heir to the throne, who to-day is viceroy."

"Concord, worthiness! Concord, grace!" said the host.

"Concord!--concord, because this man is a common Phnician merchant, and is unwilling to render me respect," cried out Dagon.

"I have a hundred ships!" shouted Hiram.

"And his holiness has twenty thousand cities, towns, and villages."

"Your worthinesses are destroying this business and all Phnicia,"

said Rabsun, with a voice which was loud now.

Hiram balled his fists, but was silent.

"Thou must confess, worthiness," said he, after a while, "that of those twenty thousand towns his holiness owns few in reality."

"Thou wishest to say, grace," answered Dagon, "that seven thousand belong to the temples, and seven thousand to great lords. Still six thousand belong clearly to his holiness."

"Not altogether! For when thou takest, worthiness, about three thousand which are mortgaged to the priests, and two thousand which are rented to our Phnicians--"

"Thou speakest the truth, grace," said Dagon. "But there remain always to his holiness about two thousand very rich cities."

"Has Typhon possessed thee?" roared Rabsun, in his turn. "Wilt thou go now to counting the cities of the pharaoh,--may he--"

"Pst!" whispered Dagon, springing up.

"When misfortune is hanging over Phnicia--" finished Rabsun.

"Let me but know what the misfortune is," interrupted Dagon.

"Then let Hiram speak and thou wilt know."

"Let him speak."

"Dost thou know, worthiness, what happened in the inn 'Under the Ship'

to our brother Asarhadon?" began Hiram.

"I have no brothers among innkeepers," interrupted Dagon, sneeringly.

"Be silent!" screamed Rabsun, in anger; and he grasped the hilt of his dagger. "Thou art as dull as a dog barking in sleep."

"Why is he angry, that--that dealer in bones?" inquired Dagon; and he readied for his knife also.

"Quiet! Concord!" said the gray-headed prince; and he dropped his lean hand to his girdle.

For a while the nostrils of all three men were quivering and their eyes flashing. At last Hiram, who calmed himself first, began again, as if nothing had happened.

"A couple of months ago, in Asarhadon's inn, lodged a certain Phut from the city of Harran----"

"He had to receive five talents from some priest," interrupted Dagon.

"What further?" asked Hiram.

"Nothing. He found favor with a certain priestess, and at her advice went to seek his debtor in Thebes."

"Thou hast the mind of a child and the talkativeness of a woman," said Hiram. "This Harran man is not from Harran at all. He is a Chaldean, and his name is not Phut, but Beroes--"

"Beroes?--Beroes?" repeated Dagon, trying to remember. "I have heard that name in some place."

"Thou hast heard it!" repeated Hiram, with contempt. "Beroes is the wisest priest in Babylon, the counsellor of a.s.syrian princes and of the king himself."

"Let him be counsellor; if he is not the pharaoh, what do I care?"

said the banker.