"Ah, Trypho! You are like the god Tammuz, killed by the wild boar, but coming to life with the blood-marks on him." "Like a king, rather," said Trypho, "for the red will be purple when it dries." "No, like a queen," retorted Hiram, pleased with the man's banter, "for I swear by Astarte that the dye on your arms is the same that is going into the robe of the future queen of Tyre." "Such is the honor your patronage has brought me," replied Trypho, making another salâm, that ended by nearly tripping the king into a dyeing vat. "But how goes the cloth?" asked Hiram, laughing. "It is nearly completed," said the workman, leading the way to an inner room. "Come in, and judge for yourself. I need not keep the secret of my art from one who knows it already." At a leaden sink a half-grown boy was drawing the snail-like murex from its shell. Cutting off its head, he dexterously detached from its body the long sac of yellow liquid, which, on exposure, changed first to green, and, passing through the intermediate shades, to a bright purple. At a bench near by a workman crushed with a wooden hammer the smaller shell of the insect since called buccinum, which, together with the body of the animal, was thrown into a vat, mixed with salt, the whole mass heated, and reduced to a liquid state by an injection of steam. The gritty substance from the shell was then carefully skimmed from the surface, leaving a lighter purplish liquid than that obtained from the murex. "They tell me, Trypho, that you can mix these two dyes at sight, so as to produce the rare tint for which your cloths are so famous. Have you no written formula, and do you never measure out the proportions?" "No, sire," replied the man, "I never learned the proportions by weight or by measure. If I knew them myself I might tell somebody; then my secret would be gone. So I never told myself how I do it. I think of a tint, and pour the dyes together, and they always come out the tint I think of. How do I do it? Just as my old legs carry me where I think of going, without counting my steps, or watching which way my toes turn." The fellow was garrulous, and, seeing that he had the king's attention, went on:--