Costobarus motioned to the shittim-wood casket and Momus undid it and strapped it on his own belt.
"The frosts! The frosts!" the dying man whispered.

The mute understood.

Then the father's eyes wandered toward the figure of his daughter fended away from him by the pagan.

The agony of her suffering and the agony of his distress for her bridged the space between them.
And while they yearned toward each other in a silence that quivered with pain, the light darkened in Costobarus' eyes.
When Laodice came to herself, she was laid upon a spot of rough grass, in the shelter of an overhanging bluff.

It was not the scene upon which her sorrow-stunned eyes had closed a while before.