His cruel orders were obeyed, and with so much secrecy that neither the mode of the death, nor even the fact, was known to more than a few.

Smerdis was generally believed to be still alive; and thus an opportunity was presented for personation--a form of imposture very congenial to Orientals, and one which has often had very disastrous consequences.

We shall find in the sequel this opportunity embraced, and results follow of a most stirring and exciting character.
It required time, however, to bring to maturity the fruits of the crime so rashly committed.

Cambyses, in the meanwhile, quite unconscious of danger, turned his attention to military matters, and determined on endeavoring to complete his father's scheme of conquest by the reduction of Egypt.

Desirous of obtaining a ground of quarrel less antiquated than the alliance, a quarter of a century earlier, between Amasis and Croesus, he demanded that a daughter of the Egyptian king should be sent to him as a secondary wife.