The old man shook back his bloody locks and looked straight into Belshazzar’s rage-shot eyes. “As you have kept faith to me and mine, so have I to you, O king!” “Revile me now!” Belshazzar’s sword whistled as he brandished. Before a mere reed Daniel might have winced not less. “I do not revile. True servant have I been to you and your fathers. My reward is this!” He held up his right arm, with the red ring marked by the fetter. “And this”—Belshazzar swung the sword higher—“one last mercy—death.” But Daniel had shaken off the soldiers. He stood erect. Some power from his eyes stayed that upraised hand as by a spell. “No, lord of the Chaldees! You cannot kill me, nor all your sword-hands, for I am mightier than they.” They heard the king laugh, but—wonder of wonders—the weapon sank at his side. “Sorcerer! By what magic can you make your old neck proof?” Belshazzar had moved two steps backward, turning his head to escape the Hebrew’s compelling gaze, but could not; and he watched with a fascinated, uneasy smile. “O king, as in former days the word of Jehovah, One and All-powerful God, spoke through my lips to Nebuchadnezzar the Great, so now again His spirit comes upon me, and puts these words into my mouth. And this is the word,”—Belshazzar was uttering a formula against the evil eye, but he could not look away,—“There shall come a time when I, whom all your wrath cannot destroy, shall stand again before you, shall declare to you the mandate of Jehovah, and when you and with you all the world shall know that whom He wills He saves, whom He wills He lays low, and whoso blasphemes Him He rewards utterly; that all may fear the Lord God of Israel, before whom Bel-Marduk is less than the small grains of the threshing-floor!” Then they saw a strange thing. They saw Belshazzar, that man of wrath, shrink back step by step before the blood-grimed, aged Jew, until from a long way off the king laughed again a shrill and direful laugh: “Away with him! Back with him to his dungeon! Keep him fast, till he longs for death, till he knows that his puny god is helpless before Bel-Marduk!” But all the strength seemed passed out of Daniel. The soldiers caught him as he fell. The king was staring wildly from one servant to another; he was as a man awakened from a frightful dream. “Wine!” he demanded. “I cannot sleep. Do you, Sirusur, pursue the Persian. Hound him down. But wine, more wine! My head throbs!” His gaze wandered; he in turn was tottering. “The king is ill,” declared Mermaza, just returned; “bear him back to his bed.” “Allat consume you, eunuch!” Belshazzar buffeted him in the face. Then the royal gaze lit again on Daniel. “Off! Off! What hinders that I kill you? All your babbling is folly. You shall cry to your Jehovah many times, and cry in vain!”