"In the first place I inform you of the death of Demæneta, brought about on your account by my means; how it happened, if you will admit me to your presence, I will relate to you in person. I have been ten days on this island, having been made captive by one of the robbers, who boasts that he is lieutenant to the chief, and keeps me closely confined--as he says, out of love; as I suppose, lest I should be taken from him. By the kindness of the gods, I have seen and recognized you, and send this tablet to you privately by an old woman who waits upon me, commanding her to deliver it to a handsome Greek, a favourite of the chief. Deliver me from the power of these pirates, and receive to yourself your handmaid; and, if you can prevail upon yourself, preserve her; knowing that in what I acted against you I was compelled, but the revenging you of your enemy was my own voluntary act. But, if you still feel an inextinguishable resentment against me, satiate it as you please; only let me be in your hands, even if I am to die by them; I prefer death from you, and to have the rites of my country performed over my remains, to a life that is more dreadful than death; and to the love of a barbarian, more odious to me than the hatred of a Greek."--This was the contents of the tablet. "O Thisbe," said Cnemon, "the gods have wisely ordained your death; and that you should become, even after your slaughter, the relater of your calamities; the Fury[7] who has driven you through the world, has not ceased her avenging pursuit, till she has made me, whom you have injured, even in Egypt, a spectator of your punishment. But what accident is it which has stopped your career, while perhaps this letter of yours was only the forerunner of some new practice against me? for I cannot help suspecting you even now that you are dead. I fear lest the account of Demæneta's death should be a fiction; lest those who have informed me of it should have deceived me; lest you should have crossed the seas with a design to renew in Egypt the tragedies you have acted against me in Attica."--"Ο you courageous fellow!" cries out Theagenes, "will you never cease to terrify yourself with shades and fancies? You cannot pretend that she has bewitched me, at any rate, for I have had no part in the drama; assure yourself that no harm can arise to you from this dead corpse, and pluck up your spirits: but who has been so far your benefactor as to slay your enemy, and how and when she descended here, I am utterly at a loss to imagine."--"As to the matter in general I am so too," replied Cnemon; "but he who slew her was certainly Thyamis, as I conjecture from the sword which was found near the body; I know it to be his, by the ivory hilt carved into the form of an eagle."--"But can you conjecture," said the other, "how, and when, and for what cause, he committed this murder?"--"How should I know that?" he answered. "This cavern has not had the virtue of