This indicated a bad night, and again the boding sense of coming misfortune stole over him.
Yet he set to work swiftly and prudently, helping with his own hands when occasion required.
Night closed in.

Not a star was visible in the sky, and the air, chilled by the north wind, grew so cold that Gorgias at last permitted his body slave to wrap his cloak around him.

While drawing the hood over his head, he gazed at a procession of litters and men moving towards Lochias.
Perhaps the Queen's children were returning home from some expedition.
But probably they were rather private citizens on their way to some festival celebrating the victory; for every one now believed in a great battle and a successful issue of the war.

This was proved by the shouts and cheers of the people, who, spite of the storm, were still moving to and fro near the harbour.
The last of the torch-bearers had just passed Gorgias, and he had told himself that a train of litters belonging to the royal family would not move through the darkness so faintly lighted, when a single man, bearing in his hand a lantern, whose flickering rays shone on his wrinkled face, approached rapidly from the opposite direction.

It was old Phryx, Didymus's house slave, with whom the architect had become acquainted, while the aged scholar was composing the inscription for the Odeum which Gorgias had erected.