“My friends,” Cyrus smote a fist on the table with a buffet weighty enough to fell an ox, “you seem to have suffered Apaosha the ‘Drought-fiend’ to dry up all your thoughts. I called you for counsel; I meet silence and black frowns. Have you nothing to say?” The king looked from face to face; his own was troubled. There was care spread upon his high, bronzed forehead, care was in the lines of his mouth under the flowing gray beard, care was dimming the genial lustre of his keen blue eyes. A man at the king’s right hand made answer, and all heard respectfully, for he was bowed with age and its wisdom. “Live forever, King of the Aryans! Do not blame us if Ahura denies us the presence of Vohu-Manö, angel of good counsel. What is left to say? Yet let the king know this—determine the fate of Darius, my son, without thought for my own private loss or grief. The honour of Persia and of Persia’s king is more than the safety of forty sons of mine.” But Cyrus shook his head, replying sombrely: “You are a true friend, Hystaspes; but understand that the honour of Persia and of Cyrus demands to-day that Darius should come harmless from that snare to which I, in folly, sent him. The blame is mine. Belshazzar has deceived me. Would to Ahura that I alone might bear the calamity, and not the noblest of our youth!” But the dark-eyed Median prince, Harpagus, who sat at the king’s left hand, broke forth hotly: “Now as Mithra rains light from the heavens, I protest the Babylonian will never dare to make a hair of our prince to fall. Belshazzar and his pack of snivelling priests and paltering corn-merchants put to death a prince of our blood royal? The Chaldeans will love well to see our Aryan cavalrymen eating up all their dear farmlands like locusts! Belshazzar’s was a coward’s threat. He will make it good—never!” “Peace,” commanded the king. “You do even that _dæva_ wrong. We have Gobryas’s letter and cannot doubt. Belshazzar has a city nigh impregnable. His army, if not so large as our Aryan hordes, is well drilled, valorous. His capital is provisioned for a siege of years. Only a man who had resolved to follow his path to the end would dare to utter this threat.” “True,” Hystaspes looked down, grievously tormented; “yet for the honour of our people and our god, there is but one answer to make to this defiance.” Cyrus was standing erect and confronting his council. “Do you, princes of Persia and Media, bid me to sacrifice Darius, son of Hystaspes, proclaim instant war, and send our forces over the Tigris to strike Belshazzar! An answer,”—the king’s voice grew hard,—“peace or war?” Stillness for a moment, and then Harpagus was thundering:— “War, in the name of every archangel! Tell Belshazzar that if Darius dies we will beat down Babylon till she be a city for wolves and jackals.” “And you, Hystaspes?” demanded the king.