"Thou knowest me, Agrippa," he began at once. "For thy mother's sake, whose happy slave I was, I will take thine Essene at his terms, less the interest on the twenty thousand drachmae." "My Essene at his terms," Agrippa repeated in perplexity. But Marsyas, with a movement of command, broke in. "The bargain is at first hand between thee and me, good sir," he said to Peter. "The second contract shall be between the prince and myself. Bring the money here at sunset and the writings shall be ready for thee." "Twenty thousand drachmae, less mine interest on the sum," Peter insisted. "Less thine interest," Marsyas assented, and Peter went out. Agrippa got upon his feet and gazed gravely at Marsyas. "What is this?" he asked. "I have bound thee to my cause," the young man answered. "How? Nay, answer me, Marsyas. What hast thou done?" the prince urged, impelled by affection as well as wonder. "I have bought my revenge, and have paid for it with a season of bondage." "Hast thou given thyself in hostage for us?" Cypros cried, springing up. Marsyas, without reply, moved to leave the room. But Agrippa planted himself in the young man's way, and Cypros in tears slipped down on her knees at his side, and, raising his hand, kissed it. "We shall not forget," she whispered to him. "I shall not know peace till I have redeemed thee," Agrippa declared with misted eyes. Great haste to get away from the overwhelmed pair seized the Essene. Trembling he shook off their hold and hurried out into the air. He had to quiet a great amazement in him at the thing he had planned for so many days to do. After a long agitated tramp in search of composure, he began to see more clearly the results of his extreme act. He had fixed himself within reach of Vitellius and the Sanhedrim: unless the ill fortune of the luckless prince improved, he had bound himself to servitude for a lifetime. But he drew his hand across his troubled forehead and smiled grimly. He had made his first decisive step against Saul! CHAPTER VIII AN ALEXANDRIAN CHARACTERISTIC Nothing but prescience could have inspired Alexander, the young Macedonian conqueror, to decide to plant a city on the sandy peninsula which lay hot, flat, low and unproductive between the glassy waters of Lake Mareotis and the tumble of the Mediterranean. For a century previous, a straggling Egyptian village, called Rhacotis, eked out a precarious existence by fisheries; the port was filled with shoals or clogged with water-growth, and the voluptuous fertility of the Nile margin followed the slow sweep of the great river into the sea twelve miles farther to the east. No other port along the coast presented a more unattractive appearance. But Alexander, having no more worlds to conquer, turned his opposition upon adverse conditions.