their hair with the champak blossom or bathing by moonlight in lotus-mantled tanks, forsook their quest, and led thenceforth idyllic lives in groves of banian and of palm.  Some became enamoured of the principles of the Gymnosophists, some couched themselves for uneasy slumber upon beds of spikes, weening to wake in the twenty-second heaven.  All which romantic variety of fortune was the work of a diminutive insect that crawled or clung heedless of the purple it was weaving into the many-coloured web of human life.

II

Some thirty years after the departure of the Persian embassy to Aurelian, two travellers met at the bottom of a dell in trans-Gangetic India, having descended the hill-brow by opposite paths.  It was early morning; the sun had not yet surmounted the timbered and tangled sides of the little valley, so that the bottom still lay steeped in shadow, and glittering with large pearls of limpid dew, while the oval space of sky circumscribed by the summit glowed with the delicate splendour of the purest sapphire.  Songs of birds resounded through the brake, and the water lilies which veiled the rivulet trickling through the depths of the retreat were unexpanded still.  One of the wayfarers was aged, the other a man of the latest period of middle life.  Their raiment was scanty and soiled; their frames and countenances alike bespoke fatigue and hardship; but while the elder one moved with moderate alacrity, the other shuffled painfully along by the help of a staff, shrinking every time that he placed either of his feet on the ground.

They exchanged looks and greetings as they encountered, and the more active of the two, whose face was set in an easterly direction, ventured a compassionate allusion to the other’s apparent distress.

‘I but suffer from the usual effects of crucifixion,’ returned the other; and removing his sandals, displayed two wounds, completely penetrating each foot.

The Cross had not yet announced victory to Constantine, and was as yet no passport to respectable society.  The first traveller drew back hastily, and regarded his companion with surprise and suspicion.

“I see what is passing in thy mind,” resumed the latter, with a smile; “but be under no apprehension.  I have not undergone the censure of any judicial tribunal.  My crucifixion was merely a painful but necessary incident in my laudable enterprise of obtaining the marvellous purple dye, to which end I was despatched unto these regions by the Emperor Aurelian.”

“The purple dye!” exclaimed the Persian, for it was he.  “Thou hast obtained it?”

“I have.  It is the product of insects found only in a certain valley eastward from hence, to obtain access to which it is before all things needful to elude the vigilance of seven dragons.”

“Thou didst elude them? and afterwards?” inquired Marcobad, with eagerness.

“Afterwards,” repeated Sorianus, “I made my way into the valley, where I descried the remains of my immediate predecessor prefixed to a cross.”