THE PRICE ACHILLES PAID The little shop was closed. The fruit-trays had been carried in and the shutters put up, and from an upper window a line of light gleamed on the deserted street. Achilles glanced at it and turned into an alley at the side, groping his way toward the rear. He stopped and fumbled for a knob and rapped sharply. But a hand was already on the door, scrambling to undo it, and an eager face confronted him, flashing white teeth at him. “You come!” said the boy swiftly. He turned and fled up the stairs and Achilles followed. A faint sense of onions was in the air. Achilles sniffed it gratefully. He remembered suddenly that he had not eaten since morning. But the boy did not pause for him--he was beckoning with mysterious hand from a doorway and Achilles followed. “Alcie--got hurt,” whispered the boy. He was trembling with fear and excitement, and he pointed to the bed across the room. Achilles stepped, with lightest tread, and looked down. A boy, half asleep, murmured and turned his head restlessly. A red-clotted blur ran along the forehead, and the face, streaked with mud, was drawn in a look of pain. As Achilles bent over him, the boy cried out and threw up a hand; then he turned his head, muttering, and dozed again. Achilles withdrew lightly, beckoning to the boy beside him. Yaxis followed, his eyes on the figure on the bed. “All day,” he said, “he lie sick.” Achilles closed the door softly and turned to him. “Tell me, Yaxis, what happened,” he said. The boy’s face opened dramatically. “I look up--I see Alcie--like that--” his gesture fitted to the room--“He stand in door--all covered mud--blood run--cart broke--no fruit--no hat.” The boy’s hands were everywhere, as he spoke, dispensing fruit, smashing carts and filling up the broken words with horror and a flow of blood. Achilles’s face grew grave. The Greeks were not without persecution in the land of freedom, and his boy had lain all day suffering--while he had been lost in the great house by the lake. He took off his coat and turned back his sleeves. “You bring water,” he said gently. “We will see what hurts him.” But the boy had put his supper on the table and was beckoning him with swift gesture. “You eat,” he said pleadingly. And Achilles ate hastily and gave directions for the basin of water and towels and a sponge, and the boy carried them into the room beyond. Half an hour later Alcibiades lay in bed, his clothes removed and the blood washed from his face and hair. The clotted line still oozed a little on the temple and the look of pain had not gone away. Achilles watched him with anxious eyes. He bent over the bed and spoke to him soothingly, his voice gentle as a woman’s in its soft Greek accents; but the look of pain in the boy’s face deepened and his voice chattered shrill.