“That is just like Dada!” she exclaimed.  “Little Papias had rolled off the chest on which he was sleeping, so the good girl had put him into her bed and was sitting on the chest herself, tired as she was.”

“She would do anything for that boy,” said Karnis.  “But it is past midnight.  Come, Orpheus, let us make the bed!”

Three long hen-coops which stood piled against the wall were laid on the ground and covered with mats; on these the tired men stretched their limbs, but they could not sleep.

The little lamp was extinguished, and for an hour all was still in the dark room.  Then, suddenly, there was a loud commotion; some elastic object flew against the wall with a loud flap, and Karnis, starting up, called out:  “Get out—­monster!”

“What is it?” cried Herse who had also been startled, and the old man replied angrily: 

“Some daemon, some dog of a daemon is attacking me and giving me no peace.  Wait, you villain—­there, perhaps that will settle you,” and he flung his second sandal.  Then, without heeding the rustling fall of some object that he had hit by accident, he gasped out: 

“The impudent fiend will not let me be.  It knows that we need Agne’s voice, and it keeps whispering, first in one ear and then in the other, that I should threaten to sell her little brother if she refuses; but I—­I—­strike a light, Orpheus!—­She is a good girl and rather than do such a thing. . .”

“The daemon has been close to me too,” said the son as he blew on the spark he had struck.

“And to me too,” added Herse nervously.  “It is only natural.  There are no images of the gods in this Christian hovel.  Away, hateful serpent!  We are honest folks and will not agree to any vile baseness.  Here is my amulet, Karnis; if the daemon comes again you must turn it round—­you know how.”

CHAPTER II.

Early next morning the singers set out for the house of Porphyrius.  The party was not complete, however, for Dada had been forced to remain at home.  The shoes that the old man had flung to scare away the daemon had caught in the girl’s dress which she had just washed, and had dragged it down on to the earth; she had found it in the morning full of holes burnt by the ashes into the damp material.  Dada had no other presentable garment, so, in spite of her indignant refusal and many tears, she had to remain indoors with Papias.  Agne’s anxious offers to stay in her place with the little boy and to lend Dada her dress, both Karnis and his wife had positively refused; and Dada had lent her aid—­at first silently though willingly and then with her usual merriment—­in twining garlands for the others and in dressing Agne’s smooth black plaits with a wreath of ivy and violets.

The men were already washed, anointed and crowned with poplar and laurel when a steward arrived from Porphyrius to bid them follow him to his master’s house.  But a small sacrifice was necessary, for the messenger desired them to lay aside their wreaths, which would excite ill-feeling among the monks, and certainly be snatched off by the Christian mob.  Karnis when he started was greatly disappointed, and as much depressed as he had been triumphant and hopeful a short time before.