"I see it all," said the General. "This Cleon, panderer to the vilest folk of Alexandria, was the agent of those who would have stolen the estate of Shattuck, but for the influence of Ctesiphon and myself, and the help of Gideon. It was Cleon's hand that struck you, Dion, when a babe; the mark of which blow Gideon carried to his grave. It was the same hand that mixed the poison for us both in Macedonia. It was this man's tongue, black with perjury, that gave the lying information against me to the Romans." "Well, now you know me," said the man with assumed indifference, "you can only kill me." "Let us take him into the city," said Agathocles. "This man is so false that I can hardly believe his damning confession against himself without better evidence." "Not into the city! Not into the city!" cried the captive. "Not into the city! For God's sake, kill me here." He writhed, not seemingly to break his cord, but rather to wrest his soul from the grip of his own body, and thus escape from life ere some deeper curse should befall him. "Not into the Holy City! Not near to the Temple! O God of Abraham! Mercy! Mercy! Not into the city!" He raised his head, and, before his captors were aware of his purpose, he dashed it against a stone, as if to make an exit for the spirit that felt itself being consigned to perdition. "Ah, Cleon," said Dion, "there is a worse poison than you have mixed for us; poison that no medicine will purge from the blood. You have swallowed your own memories, and they grip hard, do they? But why should you pray to the God of the Jews? Such a scoundrel as you cannot be Jew." The man's response was a compound of the most dreadful oaths and vilest expletives known to the tongues of Jew or Greek. "You tempt me to kill you," said Agathocles; "but that might end your misery. We will let you live. If you dread the Temple, then to the Temple you shall go." The commotion had drawn a crowd. Among them was Ephraim, the old servant of Elkiah. He at once identified Cleon as a Jew who in his youth had been driven from Jerusalem by the libertine set of young men, as one infected with vices which were too fetid for even their debauched tastes. One of his unconscionable pranks had been the defiling of some of the sacred vessels of the Temple--which doubtless accounted for his dread of dying near the holy precincts. In Alexandria--so Ephraim had heard--he had been refused admission to the Synagogue, and had openly apostatized, assuming the Greek name of Cleon instead of his own, Naaman. The dead accomplice of the false beggar could not be identified. He was clearly not a Jew. On his body were found several letters written in Aramaic, the common language of Syria and adjacent countries. One of these read as follows: