Then he went quickly on, and mounting the best horse in the king's stables, galloped at a break-neck pace down the steep incline.

In five minutes he had crossed the bridge, and was speeding over the straight, dusty road toward Nineveh.

In a quarter of an hour, a person watching him from the palace would have seen his flying figure disappearing as in a tiny speck of dust far out upon the broad, green plain.
But the Greek slave-woman stood with Zoroaster's letter in her hand and held the gold piece he had given her in her mouth, debating what she should do.

She was one of the queen's women, as it chanced, and she immediately reflected that she might turn the writing to some better account than by delivering it to Nehushta, whom she had seen for a moment that morning as she passed, and whose dark Hebrew face displeased the frivolous Greek, for some hidden reason.

She thought of giving the scroll to the queen, but then she reflected that she did not know what it contained.