“Ah, Jew!” sneered Avil, during a lull; “it would have been better to have been led by me, to have forgotten Jehovah for Bel-Marduk. Will your god save you _now_?” “If it be His will He can indeed save me!” flashed back Isaiah, unflinching. “When my father Shadrach would not bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s great statue of Bel in the plain of Dura, did he come from the king’s furnace living or dead?” “Fairly smitten on the very thigh,” grunted Bilsandan, who took small pains to conceal his enmity toward the pontiff. But Avil’s flushed face only turned the darker, as he threatened the prisoner. “By every god of Babylon you shall nevertheless die a jackal’s own death!” he shouted, while Belshazzar still thundered, “Kill! Kill!” But Sirusur stood hesitant; for if his lord had cast off the Jew’s spell, the general was still under it. In his fury Belshazzar tugged at the short sword at his side that he might become himself executioner, when a new shout of the people finally drowned his commands. “Spare Daniel! Spare the good minister! Do not anger Heaven!” Avil’s underlings were fairly howled down at last. “Except the king promise to spare Daniel, I look for a riot instantly,” remonstrated Bilsandan, the vizier, in the first instant of silence. “Better let Babylon flow with blood, be he ten times innocent,” blazed the wrathful king, “than I give way to these hissing geese. Khatin ends him to-night.” Avil-Marduk sped to the terrace where Isaiah had taken station, and beckoned in vain for silence. “Away with him!” roared the crowd, led on by Hasba, the bold priest of Nabu. “Away with the king’s evil councillor!” Belshazzar had mounted to his friend’s side. “Well,” cried he, in Avil’s ear, “Allat has loosed all her fiends! Let sword and spear quiet them!” “So be it, my king,” answered Avil, putting on a bold face, though quaking within. Belshazzar turned to Sirusur, the “Master of the Host,” “Hark you, general,” stormed the king, “this is more than half your own doing; it was you and Bilsandan who favoured that accursed Daniel, gained his reprieve, and left these geese chance to hiss so loudly. Chase them outside the temple grounds, and that quickly, or I call you my enemy as well as Avil’s.” “I am your Majesty’s slave,” retorted the general, colouring angrily, “not this man’s,” with a menacing scowl toward Avil. “I have been Imbi-Ilu’s friend, but while he raises hand against the king I become his enemy.” “Prove it, then,” enjoined Belshazzar, fiercely; “form your men! Charge!” “And Isaiah?” the general asked. “Spare now. We must torture him to learn where that wench Ruth is hidden, for she is no more at Borsippa. Now silence this hubbub.” A hubbub, indeed. The people were flinging dust in the air and calling ominously for “bricks.” Just as Sirusur had formed his men in a solid body by the stairway, a priest of Nabu drew forth a short sword, and the rest, with their brethren of Sin and Samas, imitated him instantly.