The mute stood by his master.

In that countenance fast passing under shade was written charge and injunction as solemn as the darkness that approached him.
"Here, O faithful servant, is the wife of a prince, the daughter of thy master, the joy of thine own declining days.

Shield her against wrong and misfortune by all the strength that in thee lies, as thou hopest in the King to come and the reward of the steadfast.

Promise!" They were silent lips that once knew the art and the sound of speech.
The old habit never entirely fell away from them.

Under this anguish they moved--fruitlessly; over the deformed face flitted the keen agony of regret; then he lifted his great left arm and bent it upward at the elbow; the huge, even monstrous muscles, knotted and kinked from shoulder to elbow, sank down under the broad barbarian bracelet of bronze and rippled under and rose again from elbow to wrist, ferocious, superhuman! In that movement the dying man read the mute's consecration of his one great strength to the protection of the tenderly loved Laodice.