He stood still as if petrified, and the goddess, too, did not stir.  Only the wheel which had rested at her feet began to move, and rolled, with a thundering din, sometimes around him, sometimes around the people who, as if they had sprung from the ground, formed a jeering company of spectators, and clapped their hands, laughed, and shouted whenever it rolled toward him and he sprang back in fear.

Meanwhile the wheel constantly grew larger, and seemed to become heavier, for the wooden beams over which it rolled splintered, crashing like thin laths, and the spectators’ shouts of applause sounded ruder and fiercer.

Then mortal terror suddenly seized him, and while he shouted for help to Myrtilus, Daphne, and her father Archias, his slave Bias, the old comrade of Alexander, Philippus, and his wife, he awoke, bathed in perspiration, and looked about him.

But he must still be under the spell of the horrible dream, for the rattling and clattering around him continued, and the bed where the wounded Gaul had lain was empty.

Hermon involuntarily dipped his hand into the water which stood ready to wet the bandages, and sprinkled his own face with it; but if he had ever beheld life with waking eyes, he was doing so now.  Yet the barbarian had vanished, and the noise in the house still continued.

Was it possible that rats and mice—?  No!  That was the shriek of a terrified human being—­that a cry for help!  This sound was the imperious command of a rough man’s voice, that—­no, he was not mistaken—­that was his own name, and it came from the lips of his Myrtilus, anxiously, urgently calling for assistance.

Then he suddenly realized that the white house had been attacked, that his friend must be rescued from robbers or the fury of a mob of Biamites, and, like the bent wood of a projectile when released from the noose which holds it to the ground, the virile energy that characterized him sprang upward with mighty power.  The swift glance that swept the room was sent to discover a weapon, and before it completed the circuit Hermon had already grasped the bronze anchor with the long rod twined with leaves and the teeth turned downward.  Only one of the three little vessels filled with oil that hung from it was burning.  Before swinging the heavy standard aloft, he freed it from the lamps, which struck the floor with a clanging noise.

The man to whom he dealt a blow with this ponderous implement would forget to rise.  Then, as if running for a prize in the gymnasium, he rushed through the darkness to the staircase, and with breathless haste groped his way down the narrow, ladderlike steps.  He felt himself an avenging, punishing power, like the Nemesis who had pursued him in his dreams.  He must wrest the friend who was to him the most beloved of mortals from the rioters.  To defeat them himself seemed a small matter.  His shout—­“I am coming, Myrtilus!  Snuphis, Bias, Dorcas, Syrus! here, follow me!” was to summon the old Egyptian doorkeeper and the slaves, and inform his friend of the approach of a deliverer.