wind. Where Ninus frowned and crushed obedience to his will, there Menon bought devotion's merchandise with the price of a joyous laugh; yet the boy, withal, had need to lean upon the arm of power, while the King was a king from helm to heel, a lord to whom his mighty armies gave idolatry and the tribute of their blood.

"Menon," spoke the King at length, as he pointed across the plain to Zariaspa, "I have sworn by Bel and Ramân to lay yon city low, to sack it to the dust of its whitest ash. Thinkest thou we may some day cease to squat in the manner of toads outside its walls?"

"Aye, my lord," the Prince returned, with a fleeting smile, "some day—when the toads have learned to fly."

King Ninus nodded thoughtfully, and with his fingers combed at his thick, black beard.

"True," he answered, "true; and yet we soon will be upon the wing. Look thou and listen." Again he pointed, not at the city's walls, but to the monster camp which circled Zariaspa as a girdle rests about a woman's waist. "See, Menon, thy King hath learned to fly."

Now even as he spoke, the besieging army woke as from a heavy sleep. On the gentle wind came a clank and clatter of swiftly gathered arms, the squeak of wheels and the harsh, shrill cries of captains to their men. At first the sound was faint and far, a whispered echo through the morning mists; yet anon it multiplied and swelled into a busy roar, as the vanguard of Assyria's hosts turned tail upon their enemies and crawled toward the southern mountain-pass.

Menon, like the King, gazed out across the plain, but in wonder and amaze, then raised his eyes to his master's frowning face. Twice he strove to speak, and twice fell silent, turning again to the marvel of Assyria's army in retreat.

"My lord—" he began at last, but Ninus checked him with a lifted hand.

"Nay, Menon," the master sighed, "thy soul is troubled because of the strangeness of this thing; yet heed me and know the cause. My heart is still for battle, yet the heart hath taken council of the mind, and wisdom soundeth my retreat."

The King dismounted from his steed, leading the Prince to a seat upon a stone which overlooked a wider view of the breaking camp. He placed his arm in fatherly caress on Menon's shoulder, and spoke once more:

"My warriors have called their chief a god." He paused to smile behind his beard, and for an instant sat in reverie. "Now godhood hath its virtues so long as it leadeth unto victory and beds of ease; yet this have I learned, and to my woe, that a pot of boiling grease poured down from a city's wall will scald a god as it scaldeth a naked slave. Defeat is mortal; gods bring victory alone, and my faithful followers begin to mutter among themselves."

Again King Ninus paused in reverie, then stretched his knotted arm toward the stubborn city.

"Three years have we girded Zariaspa's walls and battered at its masonry. Three years! and what hath been compassed in these weary days? We scrape an hundred-weight of scales from off the stones, and sacrifice a third of an army's strength to the sport of our laughing enemies. Our shafts are as swarms of harmless gnats, our lances reeds in the hands of girls; our mightiest engines toys at which the foemen crow and chuckle in their merriment. From the Oxus to the hills we harry the land in search of food, while the Bactrians fatten as they loll upon their battlements. Aye, meat have they, the which they devour in lazy arrogance, tossing the bones thereof at our hungry men below! Whence cometh this vast supply? From Bel or Gibil, it matters not; they gorge themselves, and laugh! Five score spies have I sent by craft into the city, and five score spies have they hanged upon the walls! By the breath of Shamashi-Ramân, it rouseth me to wrath!"

The King arose and set to striding in fury to and fro, while Menon forbore to question him, knowing that if his master willed he would speak in time.

"And so," sighed Ninus, pausing at last beside the boy, "and so will we journey westward for a space, to conquer other and weaker lands, to fatten my army with the fruits of spoil, to help them forget that a god hath failed. When this be compassed, then will I rest from war beside the Tigris where my city shall be builded in the sand—a city, Menon, the like of which no eye hath yet beheld—a fortress beside whose strength this little Zariaspa is but a nut to crack beneath thy heel. And there will I set my court and hold dominion over all the world—hold it, till men and the children of men shall wear my footstool smooth with the pressure of their knees!"

The monarch's bosom heaved in wrapt desire; his dark eyes kindled with a flame inspired, as he raised them toward the clouds. As a prophet he saw this pearl of glory rise from out the wilderness. He saw its monster walls, surmounted by a thousand and a half a thousand soaring towers. In fancy he fashioned gleaming palaces and sumptuous banquet halls. He dreamed of gardens drowsing in the cool of spreading palms, where a king might rest from the toil of his lion-hunt; he heard the splash of fountains murmuring through the long blue night, till the torch of morning lit his terraces, and the grapes of Syria ripened to his hand. He watched in triumph from his palace roof the vast brown city stretching at his feet, while the echoed roar of its busy din climbed upward in waves of melody. He heard the clang of its mighty gates of bronze that opened to the commerce of the earth—that opened again to the outrush of his war-armed hosts, a thousand nations melted into one grand hammer-head that rose and fell in obedience to his lightest nod.

"And because of this city," King Ninus cried aloud, "the peoples of every land shall hold my memory till the passing ages rot, for I swear to mount it on a deathless throne and crown it with the splendour of my name! Up, Menon, and journey with thy King to NINEVEH!"

And thus was born that Nineveh which rode astride the world, to fall at last, as falls the pride of power, and find its grave in the dust from whence it sprung—to lie forgotten in a mouldy crypt of dreams, till the peoples who slipped from the womb of another age swarmed forth to dig again—to spell out a kingdom's vanished glories from the symbols of a vanished tongue.

Menon and the King rode down into the valley and across the plain to where the great war-serpent of Assyria began to uncoil itself and crawl toward the west. For the space of a moon the joyless work went on. The camps of horse and foot were struck, the rude utensils and heavier arms being strapped to the backs of beasts of burden, while an hundred thousand chariots were hitched and deployed across the plains. Cumberous engines for the hurling of heavy stones were dragged from beneath the city walls, to be burned and destroyed, or hauled through gaps in the distant mountain range by lowing oxen and toiling, sweating slaves. The warriors set torches to the huts and houses behind their trenches, and a roar of flames was added to the bustling din of moving men-at-arms. Great columns of spark-shot smoke arose, to roll above the city in a suffocating cloud—to choke the defenders who coughed and crowded along the battlements. As each dense mass of besiegers passed, the Bactrianas set up shouts and songs of victory, while they hurled their taunts, together with flights of shafts and stones, at the growling, cursing enemy below.

From day to day the scene was one of turbulence and haste, a jumble of groaning carts and provision