The final note was scarce heard for the surge of applause which met it. The people pelted the boy with flowers—snatched off their own garlands to throw to him—until he stood ankle deep in the bloom. He was blushing, shy, now that his song was finished. Awestruck, too, for he heard everywhere the shout: “The Prize! The Prize!” Thus ended the first day of the Pythian festival at Delphi. The crowds poured down through the Precinct, a very tumult of colour and motion. White-robed priests, purple-cloaked kings, Sybarites in cloth of gold, young athletes beautiful as the sunlight in which they moved; and upon every man’s head, rich or poor, his crown of flowers. How freely they talked, how happily gave themselves to laughter! The truce of God was upon them—that peace which Apollo imposed upon the passionate, warring Greeks at festival time. Delphi itself, forbidding amid its beetling cliffs, seemed to lose sternness at this festival. Out on the far-seen hillsides were the booths and bright-coloured tents of the visitors, the flash and glitter of things brought for sale. Even yet crowds of pilgrims were arriving, swarming up the steep winding roads as the bees were fabled of old to have swarmed thither to build the first temple in Delphi. Dryas, his father, Nikander, and his brother, Lycophron, came down through the stirring Precinct, perhaps the happiest hearts of all the multitude. The prize at Delphi! It was an immortal honour. The noblest poets of Greece would write hymns in his praise. Dryas’s whole town would bask in the honour of it. Dryas’s statue in bronze would be set up near the Precinct gate, and in future years his sons and sons’ sons would recount the victory. Neighbours, kinsfolk, strangers, halted them on their homeward way. No man in Hellas was too exalted to pause in humility and delight to greet the young victor with the crown yet fresh upon his head. But it was to the father, Nikander, rather than to Dryas that they addressed themselves, lingering to catch if it were but a reflection of the surprised joy in that father-face. Nikander walked holding his boy’s hand, or touching his shoulder as he presented him to some famous man. “You liked it?” he would say, his sensitive face flushing almost as Dryas’s own. “You liked the song? Yes, I, too, enjoyed it—that stern opening—the Dorian mode. It was as new in my hearing as in yours. The dear lad kept it so.” And Dryas’s answering look showed the father’s praise to be the most precious of all. It was no usual affection which bound these two together. And now Pindar, the greatest poet, met them, outstretching both his hands. “Nikander! Dryas! Kairos bless you both! You are tasting the heady joy of victory!” “Eating victory rather,” put in the elder brother, Lycophron, with a rough laugh. “Feasting on it in courses I should say.” At his father’s hurt look he stopped and laid his hand upon the father’s shoulder.