Lives of Alcyone

Pollux returned penniless, and without the unfortunate woman, they
forgave him and he resumed his place in the family—Alcyone, of
course, being supposed to have returned from his journey; but
Pollux did not live up to the reputation which Alcyone had made for
him, and so caused much trouble.
Finally he committed a serious crime, and, for the sake of the
family honour and the legacy Alcyone sacrificed himself and took the
blame for this action upon himself. The result was that he was
condemned and cast into prison. The family recognised his heroism
on its behalf, and did all that it could for him; but even with their best
endeavours he had a miserable time, for the prison was horrible in
many ways; he had to herd indiscriminately with real criminals, and
the prisoners were habitually left without proper or sufficient food. It
was the custom that they should stand in turn at a grating and beg
from the passers-by, and in that way they were usually able to eke
out a precarious existence. His father contrived to send some little
food daily to Alcyone, even though the store at home was frequently
insufficient; but even this miserable dole—Alcyone could not take
wholly for himself, when he saw the still greater suffering of some of
the weaker prisoners.
This horrible imprisonment dragged on for some time; and in
the meantime Pollux pursued his evil ways and got himself into still
further difficulties; at last Aqua, a sympathetic younger sister to
whom Alcyone had been especially kind, could not bear this
condition of frightful injustice any longer, so she escaped from the
house without her father’ s leave, went before the Raja, and told
him the whole truth. This involved a terrible exposure, and brought
great public disgrace on the family; the old father committed suicide
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