Theron looked wearily up and bowed for the benediction of the religious.

"My son," Hieronymus said, gravely, "by trumpet-call, within the hour, the chafing populace will be admitted into these royal gardens to witness the ordeal by battle. My son, my son, when your child's voice cries for a champion to-day, I fear yours will be the only hand raised to defend her."

"They fear her for a witch," Theron answered, bitterly; "as if such golden goodness could go to the making of witch-flesh. Men are fools--men are devils."

"Be brave, be patient," Hieronymus exhorted. "Courage and patience are the harness of a soldier of God."

Theron made a gesture of impatience. "You have every man and woman in Syracuse for son and daughter. She is my only child. How is she?"

"Smiling like a bride," Hieronymus replied. "Never since the heathen built these walls did any martyr face her fate more radiantly."

"She is not harshly treated?" Theron asked, anxiously.

Hieronymus shook his head.

"Will they not let me see her?" Theron questioned anew.

"I think they will let you see her by-and-by," Hieronymus answered. "I have entreated for you. I shall know soon."

Theron gripped his hands tightly together. "I wish I had the King here at my mercy," he muttered.

Hieronymus raised a reproving hand. "We must forgive our enemies, though, indeed, such a King is God's enemy. His prisons are filled with the flower of Sicilian chivalry--the list of those he dooms to die is long."

"Though none have died yet," Theron interrupted.

Hieronymus nodded. "They say he swore a great oath his court-fool should be the first victim of your sword, and till the fool is found the victims wait on death."

"Please Heaven he be not found, then," Theron prayed.

Hieronymus smiled sadly. "He will be found when his time comes," he said. "Yet Heaven seems to counter the wicked King. Those whom he drove into exile still linger in the port. Contrary winds deny their sails."

Theron lifted his head from his hands. "They say the fairest maids of Sicily have been carried to his palace."

"Yet they are maids still," Hieronymus said, "for he swears to love no woman till your daughter dies."

"He is so sure of that," Theron sighed.

Hieronymus sought to console him.

"Your cause is just, your sword is sharp; fight in God's name. I will go to your daughter now."

Theron thanked him with a grateful glance.

"Tell her her father loves her. She knows that well, yet tell it to her."

Hieronymus left him and passed out of the arena through the archway which led to the cells. Theron remained sitting on the step with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped on his hands.

"This is the time when a man should pray," he said to himself, "but my thoughts tangle and my words jangle."

Through the gardens came a singular figure, tall and lean and withered, with a wry shoulder like a gibbous moon and a wry leg like a stricken tree, and his face had a long, peaked nose and loose, protruding lips, and ears like the wings of bats. His mottled livery was grass-stained and earth-stained, and he had dizened it with a kind of woodland finery.

He had wild flowers twisted in his hair; a chaplet of scarlet wood-berries was about his neck; he carried an ash sapling for a staff, and he munched at an apple. He looked about him curiously, as if a little dazed. Then he saw Theron and went towards him.

"Good-morning, gaffer," he said.

Theron looked up and beheld to his surprise the missing court-fool Diogenes.

"You are the fool Diogenes," Theron said. "Why have you come back? The King longs for your head. I care little who lives or dies, save one, but fly if you are wise."

Diogenes, for it was indeed he, shook his head. "Nay, nay, gaffer," he answered. "I am wise; I know my business. I think I have been asleep in the green wood a thousand years and waited upon by elves and fairies and all manner of pygmies, and they taught me the speech of birds, and what the trees whisper to each other from dawn to dusk, and the war-cries of the winds, with other much delectable knowledge which would have made me wiser than the wisest--but now that I am awake I have forgot it all."

Theron eyed him curiously. This was not the way the bitter court-fool had been wont to speak. "You seem to me a changed fool," he said, wearily.

Diogenes patted him fondly on the shoulder.

"Set it down to hearing birds whistle and watching green things grow. I am ripe and mellow. If you squeezed me dry you would find no drop of bitter in me. I bulge with benevolence like a ripe fig--and therefore your lugubrious visage troubles me."

Theron answered, heavily: "My child is charged with sorcery. There is no man but me to champion her. If I fail to win the day she dies by fire."

Diogenes seemed grieved. "She was a sweet lass and she gave me sweet milk to drink, and she showed me the way to the wonder-world of the wood. If I were something more of a fool and something less of a wiseacre I would champion her myself." And he swelled his lean body and strutted, ludicrously martial.

"Away, fool!" Theron said, angrily, for the fantastic figure vexed him.

But Diogenes was not to be offended.

"Nay, now," he hummed, benignly. "You are short with me, yet my brain bubbles with all the wit of the elder world. When I woke this morn in the green wood, a bird sang in my ear and his song told me to go down to Syracuse and creep into the King's garden; and because I am wise enough to know that the birds are wiser than I, why, I came, but I did not think it was to see a fair maid murdered. I would have liked such a sight once, but now I do not, so I will go and sleep in the rose-garden. That is what the fairies told me to do, and they will tell me when to wake. Courage, ancient! courage!"

He paused for a moment, with his head cocked on one side, eying the executioner compassionately, yet listening with pricked, bat-wing ears.

Some sound startled him, for he suddenly stirred like a startled hare, and, stooping, scuttled with incredible swiftness into the shelter of the royal gardens, where he was soon lost to sight.

Theron sighed as if his heart would break. "The very fool pities me. I am grown old and weak and have no hope."

Even as he spoke the sound of the footsteps that had scared away Diogenes grew louder, and Hieronymus emerged from the archway and came to Theron.

"Come," Hieronymus said. "Some unfamiliar gentleness in the King permits you to see your daughter. Go at once. The jailer will admit you."

Theron bowed his head. "Your blessing and your prayers," he said. Then he rose and moved slowly to the archway and disappeared.

Hieronymus looked after him thoughtfully. "Oh," he mused, "that a poor priest's blessing might be as potent as a great King's curse!"

At that moment a great trumpet sounded, the signal to admit the people of Syracuse to the royal gardens. Hieronymus could hear the eager shouts and the tramp of hurrying feet. Sadly he turned and followed Theron to the cell where Perpetua lay.

The arena was not long empty. Soon the human flood poured over its sand, babbling, shouting, eager to get seated.

"Hurry, dame, hurry!" cried one citizen to his mate. "'Tis first come first served, and there is a rare scrambling for the seats."

"I wish," grumbled another, "the King had given us leave to enter the gardens earlier. We could have sat here cosily, eating and drinking till the sport began."

"Nay," philosophized a third, "kings have their whimsies like the rest of the world and love to make folk uncomfortable."