One laugh; did Avil know that the fate of the “Beauty of the Chaldees” hung on that single breath? But Belshazzar spoke now, the spell of Atossa all broken: “Surely as Samas and Sin bear rule in the heavens, so surely have I chosen. I know the path. And who shall teach another way to _me_?” He made a menacing gesture in Atossa’s face. She never quailed. “You have indeed chosen,” said she, in icy tone; “hereafter there is war: betwixt darkness and light, _dæva_ and angel, Angra-Mainyu and Ahura-Mazda, implacable, truceless,—till the abasing of the ‘Lie’!” Belshazzar motioned impatiently to the soldiers. “Let the prince be taken to his chambers as commanded, and let the Lady Atossa go below to her eunuchs.” The two Persians sped one glance upon each other—but neither spoke farewell. [Illustration: DANIEL DELIVERS A MESSAGE] CHAPTER XV Isaiah the Jew, whose arrest had been urgently commanded by the king, continued to defy all the zeal of the royal officers. Truth to tell, that was not great. More than one captain of the “Street Wardens” had been beholden to Daniel or his late colleague, Shadrach, for one service or another, and were loath to bring the young Hebrew within Khatin’s gentle mercies. Likewise, not a Jew in Babylon, barring a few recreants, would have betrayed the youth, who passed amongst them as a veritable prophet of Jehovah, hardly less inspired than Daniel himself. When a new levy of forced labour was proclaimed, and scarce a Hebrew but had to choose betwixt toilsome days in a broiling sun and the offering of a little corn to Marduk, Isaiah had gone up and down by night among their little cottages along the Street of Kisch, exhorting, warning, encouraging. “Endure a little longer,” was his message, “a few more trials to prove their devotion, and God would recall them to His mercy.” Such was the burden of Isaiah, and to Avil-Marduk’s discomfiture scarcely a Hebrew chose apostasy, though the “whip-masters” had been ordered to be trebly harsh. The pontiff gnashed his teeth and swore by all the Anunnaki that he would yet break this Jewish stubbornness.