288 DIPHILUS.

Amp. “Very good; and I will go and fetch the
water. What a good, kind creature the priestess is!
If we had been, her own daughters, she could not
have treated us better.”

While she went on her errand, who should appear
on the scene but Labrax himself. The old villain
had not been drowned after all. As may be sup-
posed, he was in a towering rage.

“Well,” he said, stamping his foot on the ground,
“if aman wants to be a beggar, let him venture on
the sea. This is the sort of plight that he comes
home in! But where is the old fool who let me in
for all this? Ah! I see him.”

The “old fool’s” name was Charmides. He was
in Labrax’s employment, and it was he who had ad-
vised the voyage to Sicily.

“What are you in this deadly hurry about?” cried
Charmides, who was an old man, when, with much
panting and puffing, he came up with his employer.
Labrax turned upon him sharply.

“Oh, it’s you, Charmides, is it? I wish you had
been crucified in your dear Sicily before ever I set
eyes on you.”

Charmides. “And I wish I had lodged in a jail
rather than with you.”

Labrax. “What in the world possessed me to listen
to you? It has ended in my losing every farthing
I had.”

Char. “No wonder: ill got, soon gone.”