Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/271

Rh usually unmoved at the fate of her lovers, changed color, and trembled, in her anxiety for his fate.

Pericles read the words of the riddle, and with a quickness which showed his wonderful judgment, he divined its meaning. But he also guessed that to answer it rightly would forever offend the king, and make him his enemy. So he stood irresolute before the king and princess. If he showed the king he had guessed the secret, he would draw upon himself the vengeance of Antiochus, which was powerful enough to follow him to Tyre; if he failed to answer, his head was no longer his own. Thinking thus, he asked the king for some days in which to consider the matter. Antiochus, who read in the hesitation of Pericles the fact that his secret was discovered, granted his request, and Pericles went out of his presence, and in a few hours had fled the city and was on his way to Tyre. As soon as he had gone, Antiochus summoned to him one of his trusty villains, and instructed him to follow Pericles without delay, and take his life at the first opportunity, by poison or dagger, or in any manner which suited the occasion best. But Pericles was prudent and far-seeing. He knew that by guessing the riddle which Antiochus had imagined could never be solved, he had forever drawn upon himself the king’s wrath, and he