Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/154

134 succession until all those had prayed who came two or three in a ship. And ever after each prayer the Bough of Negation hummed and murmured and whirred in the gust that rustled its leaves and perhaps the Doom Oak and the Oak of Cursing gave out a ghost of a sound, but upon no other tree did a leaf quiver in the still air and the dazzling sunshine.

Then all the other suitors, even to the eightieth and last, stood up and prayed, and not one fared any better than any other, but in sight and hearing of all the suitors and priests and of all the multitude gathered upon the platform the god manifestly denied that any one of the eighty should be husband of Thessa the daughter of Polyteles of Cyrene.

And when there were but five left to be heard all those few that remained were wrought up with anticipation, for each thought that he was to be the lucky man.

And when but one remained, he was Neptilides of Augila in the desert, who in the competition of beauty had been adjudged third handsomest of all after Lerops of Zigrae, who was adjudged first in looks and Dexibios who was adjudged second. And Neptilides, because the other seventy-nine had been disappointed by the oracle, made sure that he was to win Thessa and her dowry and the inheritance of her father, and he