“Meanwhile everyone was mad with joy that the siege which had lasted a whole year, and was the most wonderful and celebrated that had ever happened, was over. Trumpets blew, bells rang, the city adorned with flowers and crowded with rejoicing people gave itself up to festivity. “But in all this triumph I had no share, for I was too ill and unhappy to take any part in the victory rejoicings. Not only had excitement, lack of food, and the long strain of the war injured my health but sad news soon came to me from Athens, where my mother and sister were living. “Chares had taken me to live with him at his house in Lindus, a town in the island not far from Rhodes, and there I heard that my mother was dead. She was ill when tidings of my father’s death reached her, and from the shock and grief of this news she never recovered. So the war had robbed me of both my parents and separated me from my sister, to whom some friend in Athens had offered a home. “You may imagine that I was a very unhappy little boy in those first days of victory, and it was not for a long time that I could bring myself to take joy in the great work that lay before my friend, Chares. “Almost as soon as the fighting ceased, he began the statue promised to the god, Phœbus Apollo—that statue which became one of the Seven Wonders of the World. “To explain how such a statue as this, requiring enormous sums of money and an enormous quantity of metal became possible to make, I must tell you what happened after we made peace. “Demetrius was a generous enemy, and just before withdrawing all his troops from the island, he actually sent us all the very war machines he had built for our destruction, saying that he could not sufficiently admire our gallant defence! Now the materials of which these engines were made were immensely valuable, and the citizens agreed to sell them and to put the great sum of money they received for them at the disposal of Chares. “So Chares began his work, and for twelve long years I saw the famous statue of the Sun-God growing under his hands in the open-air workshop he used for his task. “By the end of those twelve years I was, of course, a grown man. Many things had happened. I had worked hard and was now a very famous engineer, well known in all the islands of the Mediterranean. I had caused my old home to be rebuilt, as well as the little temple to Phœbus Apollo. I was married, and had little children of my own, who played in the garden I had known as a boy. It was lovely as ever now, for in that warm climate plants grow quickly, and once more it was full of roses and fragrant with the scent of lemon groves. “All this you must understand before I tell you what happened on the evening of the day the great statue was finished.