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passed underneath it, the Chief suddenly ran three steps and jumped, swung forward on the lamp and dropped off. It scattered oil all over the ground on its swing back, and the Council looked shocked and horrified, but none more so than Yellow Bull. Tarrik, on the other hand, took his seat as if nothing had happened, and smiled pleasantly atthe Council. They signed to Yellow Bull to speak again; he began, nervously.
    It was after this that Tarrik became quite unbearable. He simply sat there and laughed, shatteringly; no one could speak or plan with that going on, least of all Yellow Bull. Only for a few moments did the Chief recover. It was when Harn Der spoke of the end of the road, how one day it might come through the marshes and out to a new land, a seaport perhaps; one of the others had taken this for a danger, opening a way to attack from the south, not the Red Riders, but ship-people—Greeks even. Then Tarrik had spoken, suddenly, bitterly and reasonably, to say that the Greeks were no danger that way—swords came from the north and the north-east; no one need be afraid of Hellas; they had been beaten too often now. The danger was that people should still think them great and wonderful, still do what they said, not through fear of war, but through fear of seeming barbarian. ‘Let us be what we are!’ said Tarrik, and seemed to cast out the Greek in himself. But no one cared for him to say that; they must not have their relations with the south disturbed, they must keep their markets, the flow out of corn and flax and furs and amber, and the flow in of oil and wine and rare, precious things, the pride of their rich men, the adornment of their beautiful women—and besides, something to look to, some dream, some standard. Harn Der thought of the Greek artist his son had spoken of, made up his mind that the man should be encouraged, and considered what to buy, a present perhaps for Yellow Bull to take back with him to the marshes and his young wife, who must be lonely so far from the city and everything that makes life pleasant for women.
    The Chief most likely saw that he had pleased no one again; he went back to laughter or silence. Disheartened, the Council began to break up. Then suddenly he said: ‘I must see where the secret is to hide. Yellow Bull, take me to the road.’ ‘I will, Chief!’ said Yellow Bull eagerly. But again Tarrik was laughing.
    They went out. A slave came in and mopped up the spilled oil, with a timorous eye on the Chief, who still sat in his chair, still laughing a little from time to time. It began to be near evening. With the room empty and windows unshuttered, there was always a little sound ofwaves, light in summer and loud in winter, coming up across the road from the harbour and the stony beach.
    Tarrik, whose name was also Charmantides, got up and went through the house to the women’s court, to find his aunt Eurydice, who was called Yersha by the Scythians. Her room looked partly over the sea and partly over the gardens, where there were lawns of scythed grass between great rose hedges, carved marble seats under apple trees, and narrow borders of bee-flowers and herbs round fountains and statues that came once from Hellas. But Yersha who was Eurydice sat at the other window, watching the sea. She had been copying manuscript; there was pen and ink beside her, and half a page of her slow, careful writing, and now she was quite still, beside her window. Along her walls there were chests of book rolls; above them their stories were repeated in fresco, black lines filled in softly with tints of flesh or dress—Achilles in Skyros, Iphigenia sacrificed, Phaedra and Hippolytos, Alkestis come back from the dead, horsemen with the thick, veiled beauty of a too much copied Parthenon, women with heavy eyelids and drooping hands and lapfuls of elaborate drapery, all framed in borders of crowded acanthus pattern that repeated itself again and again on the