But when she would have knelt by him, he motioned to Aquila
not to permit her to approach. The mute stood by his master. In that
countenance fast passing under shade was written charge and injunction
as solemn as the darkness that approached him.
"Here, O faithful servant, is the wife of a prince, the daughter of
thy master, the joy of thine own declining days. Shield her against
wrong and misfortune by all the strength that in thee lies, as thou
hopest in the King to come and the reward of the steadfast. Promise!"
They were silent lips that once knew the art and the sound of speech.
The old habit never entirely fell away from them. Under this anguish
they moved--fruitlessly; over the deformed face flitted the keen
agony of regret; then he lifted his great left arm and bent it upward
at the elbow; the huge, even monstrous muscles, knotted and kinked
from shoulder to elbow, sank down under the broad barbarian bracelet
of bronze and rippled under and rose again from elbow to wrist,
ferocious, superhuman! In that movement the dying man read the mute's
consecration of his one great strength to the protection of the
tenderly loved Laodice. Costobarus motioned to the shittim-wood casket
and Momus undid it and strapped it on his own belt.
"The frosts! The frosts!" the dying man whispered. The mute
understood. Then the father's eyes wandered toward the figure of his
daughter fended away from him by the pagan.
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