"My words have been distorted," Agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate himself for offering a defense. "Ah-r-r! Wilt thou snivel and deny?" Tiberius snarled. The prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in his eyes. Caesar nodded; that was better. [Illustration: The prince's manacled hands clenched] "Agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from Judea; heir presumptive to the ax! Eh? Take him away! Macro, come thou to the palace to-night, and I'll deliver sentence!" The gilded lectica moved on. Twenty minutes later, Marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the litter had passed up toward Tusculum and, thrusting a hand into Junia's chair, seized her arm. "See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said to her. "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow--or thou bringest upon me the pain of killing." Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the crushing grip. "Him or me!" she told herself. "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas. "But acquit me of blame. What could I do?" "I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone. CHAPTER XXVI THE ARM MADE BARE Lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to read how Marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch. It was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung Cypros into paroxysms of suffering and desperation. Now that the unhappy princess had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, Lydia had time for her own thoughts. It was not the same Lydia that had danced on the Temple of Rannu. Spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical change. The last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid. She read: ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790. "TO THE MOST EXCELLENT ALABARCH, ALEXANDER LYSIMACHUS, GOVERNOR OF THE JEWS OF ALEXANDRIA, GREETING: "It is my grief to inform thee that at the command of Caesar, my lord and patron, Herod Agrippa, hath been confined in the Praetorian Camp awaiting sentence for utterances pronounced treasonous to Caesar. "Immediately after the prince's arrest, one of the ladies of Caesar's train was stricken by an illness, resulting from the malarious airs of the Campagna, and the emperor ordered the immediate return to Capri.