Remember where you stand, and that if I lift my finger you will be taken and bound." "Aye, lawyer, I remember this and other things.

For instance, that I have the safe-conduct of the Empress under an oath sworn on the Cross of the Christ she worships.

For instance, also, that I have three hundred comrades waiting my safe return." "Three hundred!" snarled the president.

"The Empress has three thousand within these walls who will soon make an end of your three hundred." "I have been told, lawyer," answered Jodd, "that once there lived another monarch, one called Xerxes, who thought that he would make an end of a certain three hundred Greeks, when Greeks were different from what you are to-day, at a place called Thermopylae.

He made an end of them, but they cost him more than he cared to pay, and now it is those Greeks who live for ever and Xerxes who is dead.