"There was one here but now," Perpetua answered, "a fugitive from the city, whose coming troubled me. He said the world was as wicked as a sick dream, and my heart grew cold in the sunshine."

The lines on Theron's face deepened dangerously. "Had I been by I would have twitched his tongue out," he said, fiercely. Perpetua pressed her hand upon his lips.

"No, father, you could not have touched him, for he was deformed and twisted--a hideous, helpless thing."

Theron stamped his foot upon the ground. "I set my heel upon a scorpion!" he cried. Perpetua shook her head.

"I am sorry for the things that are made to bite and sting. Let us think no more of it. Tell me of the Golden Age, father, when heroes roamed through the world, beautiful youths with eyes like mountain lakes."

Theron turned moodily from his daughter, and, going to the edge of the hill, looked down upon the distant city.

"The Golden Age is over long ago," he said, gloomily, "and we have come to the end of time."

Perpetua saw that her father was agitated, and wondered why the passing of Diogenes should move him so much. She yearned to tell him her sweet secret of the other comer, the beautiful hunter with the bright eyes and the bright hair, yet when she strove to speak words seemed to be denied her. In all the years of her young life, in all the years of love for her father, and of a friendship, a comradeship wellnigh more wonderful than love, there had been no secret shut in her heart from him. Now there was, and it seemed as if she could not set it free. While she hesitated, Theron turned to her again, and asked, abruptly, "Was this the only intruder to-day?"

Perpetua felt her cheeks burn as she answered, "Ay," but Theron did not notice her confusion, for he was again gazing down upon the city, and, though he questioned anew, his voice was listless.

"I thought you said strangers?"

"There has been no one else to-day," Perpetua answered. She purposely set some stress on the last word, that her father might, if he chose, make further question, but he seemed to be absorbed in heavy thoughts.

He turned from his view of the city and came to her with a grave face.

"There will be others," he said. "The new King--"

"Robert the Bad?" Perpetua interrupted.

Theron stared at her. "Where did you learn that?"

"The withered fool called the King so."

"The fool yelped wisdom," Theron said, bitterly.

Perpetua came up to him and touched him on the arm. "Father," she said.

"You did not tell me that there was a new king in Sicily."

The executioner looked down upon his daughter's face with a smile of grim pity. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he led her to the fallen column, and they sat there side by side.

[Illustration: PERPETUA]

"Ill news comes too soon, whenever it comes," he said. "I had hoped against hope for so long. I never told you that our good King had a son, the pride and anguish of his life, the beautiful youth for whose restoration to health yonder church was set on the highest pinnacle of these mountains. Sometimes we get our wish and find it a weapon that wounds our flesh. 'Any price,' King Robert prayed--'any price for my son's life.' And life came back to the dying child, but it seemed like a new life, selfish and vain and cruel. Weary of his father's simple rule and quiet court, he went oversea to his duchy of Naples and lived there an evil life. The King's ministers tried to keep knowledge of this from the good King's ears, but such news flies in through the chinks of palace doors. Still he did not know the worst, and to the day of his sudden death he hoped that his heir might yet prove worthy to wear the crown of Sicily. How vain that hope was Sicily now knows."

Theron was silent, staring sullenly at the ground. Perpetua plucked softly at his sleeve.

"Why did you never tell me this?" she whispered.

Theron shook his head.

"Dear child, for the sake of your mother's memory, who died to give you life, you have lived here in the holy woods away from an unholy world.

As a man shelters a little, flickering flame, hollowing his hands around it to keep it from the wind, as a man screens a flower from the cold, so I have striven to shelter and to screen your life, so that you might come to womanhood in such a fashion--so simple, so pure, so holy--as that in which girls grew to womanhood in the Golden Age. Therefore I did not tell you that Robert the Good was dead; therefore I did not tell you that this Italianate Prince of Naples reigned in his stead. So much you have learned from a stranger, but you shall learn no more. Men seldom come to these windy pinnacles; the King and the King's men and the King's women never, in all likelihood, again."

The girl listened lovingly to the well-loved voice. "Father," she asked, "why does the King come to these heights? His father never came here."

"Robert the Good never came here in your life-time, child," Theron answered, "for his heart was sad within him at the thought of all the hope and joy that had gone to the building of this temple and all the disappointment that came after. But his son comes in ostentation. Since his accession, he has visited in turn every church in his kingdom, and given to every altar some glorious gift, that Heaven, so he boasts, impiously, may be in debt to him. He comes to-day to this, the least and last."

Perpetua crossed herself as her father spoke of the King's impious boast.

"Then I shall see the King?" she said.

Theron shook his head.

"No, Perpetua, you will not see the King. You and I will keep close in-doors to-day, talking of the old gods and the old heroes, till the King has come and gone, and then we will try to forget that there is such a king in Sicily."

Perpetua sat silently for a few moments, with her hands clasped across her knees, gazing with wide eyes at the golden air, quivering with heat.

Then she turned to Theron.

"Father," she said, "if the world be not all peace and sweetness, are we wise to shut our eyes to the worse part of God's handiwork? Are we wise to hide from life, like a lizard in a cranny of a wall? You say the Golden Age is dead and gone. Can we bring it back by make-believe? Can we hold the summer back by saying it is still summer while the snow is on the ground?"

Theron turned and looked at her thoughtful face with some wonder. Never before had it happened that she had questioned his judgment. They had been happy together in their mountain nest; he had shut out the world for so long; he hated to think that he could not shut it out forever.

And now some knowledge had come to the so jealously guarded girl, creeping into the unreal world he had created for her, and the thought of it vexed him. But there was no vexation in his voice as he answered her, smiling.

"You talk as glibly as the Seven Sages, little eagle, but I will not argue with you. We must make the best of a bad world, and the best way is to shut it out."

Perpetua leaned forward and kissed him. "Dear father," she said, with infinite reverence and affection in her voice. From far below there came to her ears a sound of distant music. She read in Theron's face that he heard it, too, and, hearing, he shuddered.

"Hark!" he said. "Do you hear that music?"

He rose and moved to the brow of the hill, and Perpetua, rising, followed him. Standing by his side she looked down the slope of the mountain, and saw, far away, on the long, white road, a moving mass and the gleam of gold and steel.

"It is the King's company," Theron said, sadly. "In-doors with you, sword and singer."

Instantly obedient, Perpetua turned, took the sword from the tree against which she had propped it when Theron arrived, and entered the dwelling, murmuring as she went another verse of the sword-song:

"The gods of Hellas Blessed it with beauty; The gods of Norland Filled it with fury."

As she passed, singing, out of sight beneath the turquoise-tinted dome, Theron looked after her sadly. Then he went again to the brow of the hill and looked down the green slope, clothed thickly with venerable trees, cypress and pine and pepper tree, tamarisk and prickly pear, to the fair city beyond, nestling amid her groves of gray-leaved olive and green-leaved almond, her vineyards, her orchards of peach and apple and fig.

"Unhappy Syracuse!" he sighed. "Evil hours are gathering about you as the vultures gather around the dead body that is cast into the Barathron. It was whispered within your walls this morning that one had died of the plague, but this proud prince is worse than any plague."

He sighed again as he watched the distant procession moving slowly onward. His keen sight could distinguish horsemen and litters, golden trappings, many-colored banners; his keen ears caught, with no pleasure, the triumphant swell of the royal music. It would be a long while yet before the new King and his people could reach the shrine of the archangel. There was a point on the steep hill-side where horseman must dismount, where lady must leave litter and continue the ascent on foot.

Theron still seemed to gaze at the slowly advancing cortege, but his mind was far away from the glittering, tinkling company. He was turning in fancy the pages of his past, as he might have turned the pages of some painted manuscript, and reading therein the record of his strange life. He saw himself in his boyhood, the son of the hereditary executioner, aiding his father's task, learning his father's trade, patient and unashamed. He saw himself in his young manhood loving beyond his star, and his heart quickened as he thought of youth and beauty. He saw himself in his prime, and his eyes filled as he thought of youth and beauty wronged, betrayed, and abandoned. He saw himself clasping in his arms the injured idol of his youth; he saw again the strange scene in the forest, the captured wronger, the rude, lawless trial, and the stroke of the great sword which avenged dishonor. He saw again his sad, sweet nuptials; he lived anew through that brief spring and summer and autumn of belated happiness; he saw again the dead woman and the living child. He recalled his vow that the girl Heaven had given him should live apart from the world, sequestered in the holy solitude of the hills, cloistered in the pine woods. Year by year he seemed to see again the growth of the girl's life, the patient care, the mutual love--saw at the last the fairest flower of Sicilian maidenhood, Perpetua. All these memories belonged to the reign of the good king Robert, the days when the executioner's sword never swung in the sunlight over a victim, when it was almost possible for the executioner to credit the ancient tales that he told to his beautiful child, and to believe that the Golden Age, indeed, had come again. And now King Robert the Good was dead and the Golden Age was as far off as those little, golden clouds above the sea.

The executioner clasped his hands together in a despairing prayer for Syracuse. For himself he must ply his trade, for that was his duty as it had been that of his father before him, and his father before him. As for Perpetua, he would make a home for her still deeper in the heart of the mountain woods, and still tell her marvellous stories of the Age of Gold.

He turned away from the prospect of the city and walked slowly towards his dwelling. Clearer and clearer now came the sound of the advancing music. He paused for a moment on his threshold.

"I shall be brighter when the King has come and gone," he said. Then he entered his dwelling and drew the door to after him.