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ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
"In a Physical Ecstasy He Spoke Out That Which Clamored At His Lips." [Page 44]	Frontispiece
"'Were I That Woman, I Should have Wanted to Love Him.'" [Page 85]	72
"'You Sent For Me, Lady Varia?'" [Page 152]	176
"Half a Dozen Young Beauties had Taken Possession—Girls of the Haughtiest Blood in Britain." [Page 254]	254
"The Sight Burst Upon Him in All Its Hideousness—Where had Been the Stately Mansion of His Lord." [Page 344]	364

CHARACTERS

EUDEMIUS, a Roman lord living in Britain VARIA, his daughter LIVINIUS, a Roman citizen, a boyhood friend of Eudemius MARIUS, his son, of the Roman legions in Gaul [Guests of Eudemius] MARCUS SILENUS POMPONIUS, Count of the Saxon Shore AURELIUS MENOTUS, duumvir of Anderida FELIX, his son CAIUS JULIUS VALENS, a Roman citizen [Roman girls, daughters of the guests of Eudemius] JULIA NIGIDIA PAULA GRATIA NERISSA, nurse to Varia HITO, master of the household of Eudemius CHLORIS, of all nations, living upon Thorney [Inmates of her house] SADA, a Saxon EUNICE, a Greek ELDRIS, a Briton, a convert to Christianity WARDO, a Saxon, a slave in the house of Eudemius VALERIUS, a Roman, a soldier of fortune TOBIAS, a Hebrew, a worker in ivory RATHUMUS, a British peasant, bound to the soil SUSANNA, a Hebrew woman, his wife NICANOR, a story-teller, their son WULF, the Red, a Saxon free-lance CEAWLIN, a Saxon chieftain FATHER AMBROSE, of the Christian church NICODEMUS, the One-Eyed, a British freedman MYLEIA, his wife MARCUS, a slave in the house of Eudemius BALBUS, a convict JUNCINA, a fish-wife on Thorney SOSIA, her daughter

A flower-girl, a Saxon singer, slaves, trades-folk, soldiers of the military police; guards and overseers of the mines, and miners; Roman nobles and patrician women; Saxon men-at-arms, and men of the outland nations

Scene: Britain in the last days of Roman power Time: between A.D. 410 and 446

LIST OF TOWNS AND RIVERS

WITH THEIR MODERN SITES AND NAMES

Abus Flumen	Humber River.
Ad Fines	Broughing, Hertfordshire.
Anderida	Pevensey.
Aquæ Solis	Bath.
Bibracte	Unknown.
Caledonia	Scotland.
Calleva	Silchester.
Corinium	Cirencester.
Cunetio	Folly Farm, near Marlborough.
Deva	Chester.
Dubræ	Dover.
Eboracum	York.
Gobannium	Abergavenny.
Glevum	Gloucester.
Isca Silurum	Carleon.
Leucarum	Llychwr, county of Glamorgan.
Londinium	London.
Noviomagus	Holwood Hill, parish of Bromley.
Pontes	Staines
Portus Magnus	Porchester.
Ratæ	Leicester.
Regnum	Chichester.
Rutupiæ	Richborough
Sabrina Flumen	Severn River.
Serica	China.
Tamesis Flumen	Thames River.
Tripontium	Near Lilburne.
Uriconium	Wroxeter.
Urus Flumen	Ouse River.

THE MANTLE OF MELCHIOR

BOOK I

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NICANOR:

TELLER OF TALES

Book I

THE MANTLE OF MELCHIOR

I

Nicanor the story-teller was the son of Rathumus the wood-cutter, who was the son of Razis the worker in bronze, who was the son of Melchior the story-teller. So that Nicanor came honestly by his gift, and would even believe that his great-grandsire had handed it down to him by special act of bequest.

Now Rathumus the wood-cutter, tall and gaunt and fierce-eyed, coming home with his fagots on his shoulder in the gloam of the evening, when the fireflies twinkled low among the marshes, saw Nicanor on the side of the hill against the sky, sitting with hands clasped about his knees, crooning to the stars. Rathumus bowed his head and entered his house, and to Susanna, his wife, he said:

"The gift of our father Melchior hath fallen upon the child. I have seen it coming this long, long while. Now he singeth to the stars. When they have heard him and have taught him, he will go and sing to men. He is our child no longer, wife. His life hath claimed him."

Susanna, the mother, said:

"He will be a man among men. He will be a great man among great men. It may be that the Lord Governor will send for him. But—oh, my boy—my boy!"

Rathumus answered gravely:

"Pray the holy gods he will not misuse his power!"

Presently Nicanor came in, with the spell not yet shaken off him, wanting his supper. A smaller image of his father he was, lean and shock-headed, with gray steady eyes changing from the stillness of childhood's innocence to the depth and wonder of dawning knowledge.

Rathumus said:

"What hast been doing, boy?"

Nicanor stretched like one arousing from sleep.

"I know not," he answered. "Perhaps I slept out under the moon last night and she hath turned my head.—Father, I have been thinking. When I am become a man I shall do great things. Even you have told me that the destiny of a man's life lieth between his hands."

"Son," Rathumus said quickly, "remember also that men's hands lie between the hands of the gods, even as a slave's between the hands of his over-lord. Keep it in mind, child, that thou art very young, that thy first strength hath not yet come upon thee; and strive not to teach to others what thou hast not learned thyself. For that way lies mockery and the scorn of men."

"Now I do not understand where thy words would lead," Nicanor said; and his gray eyes, in the wavering torchlight, were doubtful. "I teach no one. Perhaps—it was not I who slept under the moon, after all."

For he was young, and though his parents saw what had come upon him, he himself saw not.

So Nicanor had his supper, of black bean-porridge, taking no thought of those parents' loving thought for him; and later climbed the ladder to the loft where he slept. After a while, Susanna, yearning over her boy in this, the first dim hour of his awakening—yearning all the more since she saw that he was following blindly the workings of his own appointed fate, without any sense or knowledge of it himself—went up the ladder also and sat beside him, thinking him asleep. But Nicanor put out a hand and slid it into hers, and shuffled in his straw until he was close against her. She gathered him into her arms, his shaggy head upon her breast, and rocked him to and fro in the darkness. To-morrow he would go where this fate of his called him; but this last night he must be hers, all hers, who had borne him only to give him up. Nicanor, stupid with sleep and comfort, murmured drowsily, and she bent close over him to listen.

"Mother, three nights ago my father spoke of Melchior, and the name hath lingered in my head. Who was he? What was he?"

"Thy father's father's sire," she told him. She saw it coming; the chains which bound his heart to hers were stretching. "He was a teller of tales, son, and—thy father thinks a fold of his mantle hath fallen upon thee. He it was who was first servus in the family of our lord. Little one, tell mother; what thoughts hast thou when the night comes down and the wide earth hushes into drowsy crooning? Hast ever felt dreams stirring at thy heart-strings like chords of faintest music?"

"Mother!" Nicanor cried, and tightened his arms about her. "Thou hast it—the words—the words! Tell me how to do it! Thoughts I have, and visions so far away that they are gone before I know them—but the words! I cannot say the things I would, so that they ring. Teach it me, then!"

Susanna laughed, and stroked her boy's hot head.

"Words I have, little son," she said softly, "but I have no tune to sing them to. A woman hath but one tune, and that is ever in the same key. One song, and one only, in her life she hath, and when that is ended, she is dumb. But please the good God! thou'lt have what lies behind the words and alone makes them of value; the thought which is the foundation-stone to build upon. And then the words will come also. What visions hast thou seen, sonling?"

"Mother, I cannot tell, for my mouth is empty though my head rings. Always it begins as though a curtain of mist were swept rolling back from the face of the world, and I see below me vague mountains and broad lonely wastes, and gray cities sleeping in dead moonlight, for it is ever night. I see clouds that reach away to the rim of the earth, and it is all as in a dream, and—and so deep within me that I lose it before I know it.—Oh, I cannot tell!"

He stirred restlessly and nestled his head deeper into her breast, and she stroked his hair in silence. When he spoke again there was a new note in his boy's voice.

"Mother, I too will be a teller of tales, even as was that sire of my father's sire whose name was Melchior. For in that there is to me all joy, and no pain nor sorrow at all. And I shall be great, greater than he and greater than those who shall come after me."

Susanna laid her hand across his mouth.

"Hush thee, for the love of dear Heaven, hush! That is boasting, and good never came of that! Oh, little son of mine, listen to me, thy mother—it may be for the last time—and keep my words always in a corner of thy heart. They shall be as a charm to keep all danger from thee. Pray to God nightly, the dear God of Whom I have tried to teach thee; keep thy hands from blood, thy body from wanton sin, and thy tongue from guile. So shalt thou be pure and thy tales prosper; for untainted fruit never blossomed from a dunghill. Remember that the Lord loveth all his creatures even the same as he loveth thee. As thou hast good and evil both within thee, so have others; wherefore judge them in mercy as thou wouldst thyself. And judge thyself in sternness as thou wouldst them; so shalt thou keep the balance true. Now thou art sleeping through my preaching—well, never mind! Kiss thy mother, dear one, and I will go."

She descended the ladder; and Nicanor's voice came sleepily muffled through the straw.

"All the same I shall be great—greater than that old man who was before me—greater than kings—greater than any who shall come after—"

He slept, and the moonlight streamed upon him in a flood of silver.

And below, at Rathumus' side, lay Susanna, the mother, and stared wide-eyed and wakeful through the darkness.

II

Nicanor sat beside the fire, his hands clasping his knees, his eyes glowing in the ruddy leaping of the flames. Around him on the moor squatted a band of belated roving shepherds, who from all the country round were bringing their flocks to fold for the Winter. About the fire, at discreet intervals, the sheep were herded, each flock by itself. Around every huddle a black figure circled, staff in hand, hushing wakeful disturbers into peace. The shepherds ringing the fire sprawled carelessly; uncouth rough men with shaggy beards and keen eyes, their features thrown into sharp relief against the light. Farther off, small groups, close-sitting, cast dice upon a sheepskin with muttered growls of laughter. The musky smell of the animals tinged the first chill of Autumn which hung in the air. Around them the moor stretched away, vast and silent, broken into ridges filled with impenetrable shadows until it melted into the mystery of the night. Over the world's darkness a slender moon, sharp-horned, wandered through rifting clouds.

Nicanor's voice rose and fell with the crackling flames. His eyes gleamed, his face quivered; the men within hearing hung upon his words. Gradually the dicers' laughter died; one by one they left their clusters and joined the circle at the fire. Nicanor saw, and his heart swelled high. This was what he loved—to fare forth at night and come upon such a crowd of drovers, or it might be wood-cutters or charcoal burners; to begin his chant abruptly, in the midst of conversation; to see his listeners draw close and closer, gazing wide-eyed, half in awe; to move them to laughter or to tears, as suited him; to sway them as the marsh winds swayed the reeds. At times, when this sense of power shook him, he took a savage delight in seeing them turn, one to another, great bearded men, sobbing, gasping for breath, striving for self-control—simple-hearted children of moor and forest, whose emotions he could mould as a potter moulds his clay. He could have laughed aloud, he could have sung for sheer joy and triumph, to watch this thing. Again, he would make them shiver at his tales of the world of darkness—shiver and glance from side to side into the outer blackness, with eyes gleaming white in the firelight. For it was a superstitious age, in which every field, every hearth-stone, had its presiding genius for good or ill; and there were many things of which men spoke with bated breath and two fingers out.

Nicanor ended his chant:

"So this man died, being unpunished, and went away into a great country which was a field of flowers. And in the midst of the field was a city wherein the man would enter. But even as he walked through this field of flowers, he saw that out of the flowers ran blood, and the flowers spoke and cried out upon him because of that thing which he had done when he was upon the earth. And the man was sorely frightened."

There was a mutter and a stir among the crowd. A black bulk heaved itself up between Nicanor and the firelight, and a swollen voice cried out:

"Now by Christ His cross, how comes it that this snipe of a stripling may speak from his mouth of what lieth beyond the grave? For this is death, and death is a matter concerning Holy Church alone. By what right doth he tell us of what she says no mortal may know?"

Cries from his mates interrupted.

"Nay, Rag; shut thy gaping mouth and leave the lad in peace! And so—and so—what then befell this wicked man, son?"

But Rag was not minded to be put aside so lightly.

"I say 'tis wrong!" he bawled. "No man, without warrant, may thus blab of what goeth on beyond the grave!"

A voice seconded him from the outer ring, but dubiously.

"I think the Saxon right! How may we know if this lad speaks true of that which comes to pass hereafter? Boy, what earnest canst give that this thing happened so?"

But another shouted:

"In the name of the gods, Rag, get thee to sleep once more, thou stupidest lout in Britain! It is a scurvy trick to waken thus at the wrong time and trumpet thy nonsense in such fashion. Good youth canst not skip that bit for peace's sake, and get on to the next part?"

Rag's voice blared into this one's speech.

"Nay, now I am awake, I'll not sleep again until I know if a lie hath waked me. For if it be not the truth, it is a lie, and a lie shall have short shrift with me!"

The men, stirred by the tale, took sides. A gale of conversation sprang up. Some wished the story to go on; others would know by what means this lanky youth could tell of what was to come to pass hereafter. They knew not the word imagination. Consequently fierce arguments arose. The burly cause of the uproar curled up and went quietly to sleep once more, leaving his fellows to settle for themselves the questions he had propounded. It is the way of his kind. High words fanned the spark of their excitement. Two met with blows; one stumbled into the hot embers. He cursed, and the light flashed on a drawn blade. Instantly the noise redoubled. Mingled with it was the bleating of frightened sheep, the oaths of drovers who strove to check incipient stampedes. Nicanor hugged himself with joy. If but his father could be there to see! Melchior, that wonderful great-sire of his, could not have so stirred men that they were ready even for blood and violence. He, Nicanor, could; wherefore he was greater than Melchior. His blood leaped at the thought; he wished to proclaim his exultation to the world.

But things soon took a different turn.

In the confusion, Rag, lying almost beneath his comrades' feet, got himself kicked. He leaped to his feet, dazed, roaring like a bull, and, stupid lout that he was, took unreasoning vengeance upon the first object which caught his eye. This chanced to be Nicanor.

"See what thou hast brought us to, son of perdition!" he cried. "But for thee and thy fool's tales we should be lying asleep like good men and true. This is thy work, with thy talk on heaven and hell and flowers which vomit blood. God's death! Heard ever man the like? If thou knowest not of what thou pratest, thou hast lied, and that deserves a beating. If thou dost know, thou hast the black art of magic—an evil-doer, with familiars who tell thee things not to be known of earth; and that deserves a flaying!"

His voice was loud. His partisans took up his cry. Nicanor found himself surrounded. He became enraged; forgot that he himself with his wizard tongue had worked them into a very fitting state for any outbreak. That the emotions he had aroused should be turned against himself was a monstrous thing. He drew his knife; one seized it from his hand and flung it into the heart of the fire. Black figures danced around him; he was lifted off his feet by their rush; flung down, trampled upon, bruised, kicked, beaten. Men, losing all thought of him, fought over his head, clamoring old pagan creeds and shrieking aloud their theories concerning the Seven Mysteries of the Church. They differed wildly. From the criticism of a romantic tale, the discussion flamed into a religious war.

One with a broken head fell senseless near Nicanor. He, in scarcely better case, turned and squirmed until he got himself covered with the body; so saved his ribs and perhaps his life.

The combat ended, after a lapse of minutes, as abruptly as it had started. A cry arose from the hurrying guardians of the flocks:

"The sheep! Look to the sheep! They scatter!"

The animals, frightened by the uproar into panic, broke from their cordon and bolted into the darkness. Religion was forgotten on the instant; men in the act of giving a blow swung around and fled after their property. Seeing this out of the tail of his eye, Nicanor crawled from beneath the protecting body. He stood upright beside the deserted fire, panting, glaring, his clothes in tatters. Blood flowed from his nose, and from a cut upon his temple. He was a sorry sight. He lifted his clenched fist and shook it at his vanishing assailants.

"By Christ His cross!" he swore, repeating Rag's oath, "after this I shall make you believe what I tell you, though I say that your hell is heaven and your heaven hell. You have bruised me, beaten me, because of what? Something too high for your sodden brains to know! You have flouted me; now I shall flout you. I shall make you fear me, tremble at my words—ay, kiss the very ground beneath my feet. You shall learn to fear me and my power; you shall cringe like the curs you are!"

He went home in a quiver of rage and hate and shame, wounded in his body, still more sorely in his dignity, and told his mother he was going away. Where, he did not know. This was a small detail, since to him all the world was new. Folk had faith in the manifestations of Providence in those days; Rathumus and Susanna believed they heard Fate speaking by the mouth of their angry son. Susanna's eyes filled with tears. Rathumus nodded his great head gravely and slowly. Nicanor, overflowing with his wrongs, strode up and down the hard earth floor in a passion. Again he gave tongue to his lamentations.

"I am stronger than they—I shall conquer! Thou shalt see! I shall make them acknowledge that I, son of Rathumus, am greater than they. This shall be my revenge, and though it take me all the years of my life, I shall win to it by fair means or foul."

"Son, son!" Rathumus said sternly. "Speak not thus rashly. For the gods, and the gods alone, is vengeance."

But Susanna took her boy to his own loft, and there comforted him, motherwise.

"Thou wilt yet get the better of them all, my son. That they should have dared to treat thee so! But oh, be careful, for my sake! Now hearken. I will have thy father pray that our gracious lord permit thee to go to Christian Saint Peter's church, on Thorney, which is called the Bramble Isle, to learn a trade. Though he be no believer in the Faith, our lord is a good man, merciful unto us, his slaves, and I doubt not will give consent. Then seek there a man by name of Tobias, a colonus and a worker in ivory for the good Christian priests. He, it may be, will aid thee for sake of her who is thy mother."

She stopped, then, and looked into his face. But he met her eyes without a change, and never thought to question what her words might mean. For he was very young; also his mother was his mother. So that Susanna smiled, for pure joy and happiness, and said:

"He is a wise man, with goodly store of wealth. Also hath he been in far strange countries, and seen right marvellous things. And he will take thee to learn of him, if so be thou wilt say thou art son to Rathumus and Susanna his wife. And so wilt thou become great, and very wise, and loving."

So in the end, Nicanor started off alone in the world, with his parents' blessing, which was all they had to give him, to find out whither this Fate of his had called him.

III

Thus it was that Nicanor left his home in the gray northlands, up by the rolling hills and the barren moors which lay under the great Wall of Hadrian; and journeyed down the long road which led ever southward to Londinium. Past Eboracum, on the Urus, that "other Rome," where the Governor of Britain dwelt, famous as the station of the Sixth Legion, called the Victorious, the flower of the Roman army, which men said had been there for upwards of three hundred years. He crossed the wide river Abus, and thought it the ocean of which he had heard tales; he stole at stations and begged at farms, and drank in all that he could see and hear.

Over hills and through valleys the great road ran, straightaway for league upon league, turning aside for no obstacle, invincible as its builders, ancient and enduring. It crossed rivers, it clove through darkling woods, it traversed wide and lonely wastes, and led past walled towns, worn by the feet of marching legions, scored with the grooves of wheels. And even as across the world all roads led to Rome, so here did all roads lead to Londinium, and therefore to Thorney on Tamesis.

And Londinium was no longer the collection of mud huts filled with blue-painted Britons, of which dim tales were told. For under Roman rule fair Britain had cast half off the shroud of her brutish early days, and blossomed into a civilization such as she never before had known, and would not know again for many hundred years. One passing glimpse of light she caught—even though it had its shadows—before the veil shut down once more with the coming of the Saxons. For, though Roman rule in Britain was said to end with the fourth century, Roman influence, Roman customs, Roman laws, survived and were paramount during the years of independence which followed, until throttled by the slowly tightening hand of Saxon barbarism. Then the old dark times returned.

The Romans were hard taskmasters, but the task they had was hard. They were often merciless, but those beneath them had been wild beasts to tame. They were in power supreme and absolute, and they lived in ease and plenty upon the toil of native serfs and bondsmen. Fair villas, stately palaces, costly foods and fine raiment—all the luxuries those old days knew were theirs. Under them was the mass of the native population, staggering beneath their burden of taxation, bound to the soil, often absolute slaves, who spent their lives toiling in brickfields, in quarries, in mines, and in forests, living in straw-thatched cabins upon the lands of masters who paid no wage. When there was rebellion, these masters knew how to deal punishment swift and sure; when there was submission, they gave kindness and reward. Had Rome not been as strong as even in her decline she was, Romans could not have held Britain as long as they did. For on sea and land, on the verge of the civilization they maintained, were restless tribes, Scots, Picts, and Saxons, seizing every pretext, every moment of unguardedness, for encroachment and disturbance.

So that their stern discipline was necessary, and not without results which went for further good. Under Roman rule all the surface of the land was changed. Great towns, walled and fortified, rose on the sites of ditch-surrounded villages. Marshes were drained, bridges were built, and rivers banked; forests were cleared and waste lands reclaimed. More than all, the land was tilled and rendered productive, so that Britain became the most important grain province of the empire. Romans found in Britain a scant supply of corn, grasses on which the cattle fed, wild plums, a few nuts and berries. They brought to Britain fruits and vegetables from many lands beyond the seas; from Italy gooseberries, chestnuts, and apples; walnuts from Gaul; apricots, peaches, and pears from Asia. Paved roads webbed the island, wide and well-drained, by which bodies of troops could be massed at any given point with incredible rapidity. Fortifications were built and in the north walls of solid masonry were thrown across the country from the Oceanus Ibernicus to the Oceanus Germanicus, for the determent of common foes.

That upon which Rome once set her seal could never wholly lose the mark; must remain bound to her by ties, which, stretching across the centuries, would link the future to the past. In spite of the bitterness of her defeat and ruin, and because she still was Rome, she was mighty enough to leave precious gifts to the peoples who should come after her. To Britain, because Britain had been her own, she left many legacies great and small: the sonorous richness of her speech, soon corrupted to make for a new world a new speech as noble; and more than all, she left the word of her mighty law, proudest monument ever reared by mortal hands to a nation's glory. Rome's sons builded well for her; and the labor of their hearts and hands was not for the day alone, but for the ages. Towns yet to rise upon the ashes of her stately cities would find their model in her municipal government, and in her laws concerning the taxation of land and the distribution of personal and real estate. Old customs she left to be handed down to those who should sit in her sons' places—the luctus of widows, who for a full year of widowhood might not wed again; the names of her deities she gave to the days of the planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image of an enemy transfixed by bodkins for the torment of that enemy; the belief in the were-wolf (one of the oldest of Roman traditions); the association of the yew tree with mourning and the passing of human souls.

Britain, with all her virgin wealth unmined, furnished Rome with enormous food supplies; sent many thousand men to serve with Roman armies on the continent; and received the colonists, called auxiliaries, brought thither in accordance with Rome's invariable policy of transplanting to the land of one nation captives from another. Thus the population of Britain, composed of people from nearly every race or tribe which has been subdued by Rome, was strangely heterogeneous, yet as strangely fused. It was Romanized; the national individuality of its units was lost in that of their conqueror. But as Rome destroyed the nationality of her captives, so in time she inevitably destroyed her own. If they were Romanized, she was Gothicized and Gaulicized. But by this means only was the circulation of her life-currents maintained to the uttermost branches of the empire. That great empire, age-old, rotting inwardly almost to decay, was vitalized, as it were galvanically, against her approaching dissolution by the blood of her colonies. In the throes of hierarchical government, torn by three irreconcilable religions—polytheistic, Julian or Augustan, and Christian—she had no strength to spare for these outsiders when her own life was at stake. The story of Roman Britain is the old story which history repeats down all the ages: Rome sacrificed one part of Europe that the whole might not be lost, and offered up the few for the good of the greater number.

For in those dark days from the second century of the Christian era until near the close of the fifth, when came the last stage of the struggle and the extinction of the Empire of the West, the world seemed tottering to its ruin. Kingdoms shook and crumbled to their fall; new powers strove headlong for their seats; men found themselves harried on all sides, with no pause for respite, and harried again in turn. They did not understand; they knew only that fierce unrest possessed all the earth, manifesting itself in the terrible wandering of the nations, which was to culminate in a new world and a new order of things. Small wonder that bewildered folk, swept on and overwhelmed in the maelstrom of world-wide turbulence, unknowing what must happen next, predicted and believed that with the year 999 the end of the world would surely come.

They had good reason for such belief. At Rome the fierce tribes from Northern Europe could no longer be held back. Goths, Vandals, Huns, each in their own good time had joined in the attack. Rome the Mighty, the Eternal, invincible as Fate, whose power no man believed could have an end, was brought to bay at last, impotent, drained by internal sores, goaded and tortured by foes without, with a horde of wolfish barbarians snarling and snapping at her throat. From one distant province after another her legions were called home. The fated twelve centuries of her power were ended; the direst tragedy of history had begun.

Britain, with all her fear and hatred of the heavy Roman hand, had yet been secure from outer harm while the strength of that hand was with her. For in the north were skulking bands of Picts and Scots, lawless and undisciplined, seized with the contagion of excitement which stirred their neighbors. In the south were Saxons, the terrible men of the Short Knives; about the coasts to east and south were bands of pirates, Jutes and Saxons both. Driven from their own lairs, they could but seek new resting-places; and Britain was the only spot where they might obtain a foothold. These rovers the Roman legions had held long years in check; yet it was told that soon the troops would be recalled to Rome's defence. None believed that Britain would be left wholly to herself; for Rome was too far away for her full peril to be brought home to those whose own affairs kept their hands well filled. But in the tenth year of the fifth century across the sea came letters from Honorius the Emperor, urging the cities of Britain to provide for their own defence, since Rome could no longer send them aid. And for Britain this was the slow beginning of the end. There followed then invasion after invasion of barbarians, which the cities, forever quarrelling among themselves, were forced to unite in repulsing. The Saxons thus overcome, ended usually by settling in Roman cities under Roman government peaceably enough until the next attack by their countrymen, in which they invariably joined. By the year 420 Angles and Saxons had gradually established themselves on the eastern and southeastern coasts, while other allied tribes constantly harassed the western districts.

Since the second century Rome's army in Britain had dwindled to four legions. At Deva, in the west, was the Twentieth Legion, holding in check the fierce mountain tribes of the Silures, and, with the Second, farther south, at Isca Silurum, keeping at bay the pirates who at times sailed up the broad Sabrina on plunder bent. In the north, at Eboracum, was the famous Sixth, within quick reaching-distance of Valentia and Caledonia. At Ratæ was the Ninth, guarding the low country and the eastern fens. But after the Emperor's letter, the Ninth and the Twentieth sailed away, and the proconsul at Eboracum perforce sent part of his own troops to fill their places. Two years later, the Sixth was recalled. And then the consul abandoned Eboracum, that great city which since its foundation had been the seat of government for all the land, and with his forces moved farther south, leaving it deserted.

But not for long. For Caledonians and Saxons came down from the north and occupied it, and settled there to stay. And after that, whenever Romans left the northern towns, seeking greater security in the southward provinces, the barbarians advanced and took possession, and thus gained the foothold for which they had been struggling ever since the Conquest. And so the coming of the end was hastened.

Those later days of the departure of the troops were stirring days. The island, governed by the lords of the cities, each in feudal independence, had shaken off the leading-strings of Rome. It was wealthy; as yet it was prosperous; the advance of the barbarians, though it might be sure, was slow. When Rome's troubles were past, she would send her troops again, and the invaders would be driven out for good and all. Yet there were many folk abroad in those days, asking anxious questions, filled with responsibility and care. And ever and again, along the great white roads, a cohort would go flashing past, lined up to full number, gallant in fighting trim, with standards flying, and eyes set always southward, toward the sea and Rome.

There were many other folk upon the busy highways—an endless procession that went and came. Pack-horses, war chariots, slaves and soldiers, nobles, merchants, and artificers, men with goods to sell and men without—a motley throng from many lands. Nicanor, shy and fierce-eyed and of shaggy hair, tramping steadily southward in the wake of the swift-footed soldiers, felt that the world was a very mighty place, and never had he dreamed of such great people. As he drew nearer Londinium, the traffic and the bustle increased. More troops kept coming up; and again others passed them, going down. And now, among the low hills, he caught glimpses of fair and stately houses gleaming among wooded groves; and there were huts of plastered mud, straw-thatched, where dwelt gaunt, collared slaves.

On either side of the road were broad meadows where sheep were grazing; and ploughed fields where men and women stood yoked like cattle and strained to the cut of the ploughman's lash; and quarries where men toiled endlessly under heart-breaking loads, driven on by blows and curses. These were the things which Nicanor had known all his life, for his father worked, and his mother. But when he met a fat and perfumed man, riding upon a milk-white mule, with servants before and behind him, and beasts of burden bearing hampers—then Nicanor could not understand. He bowed before the fat man deeply, thinking him the great Lord Governor himself; and men by the roadside laughed and mocked him. So that he fought them, and came out of his second conflict very valiantly, with a closed eye and a lip badly cut.

And so, in the fulness of time, he came to the last day of his journey.

It was a gray day, touched with the smoky breath of Autumn, with all the country veiled in softest haze. It was very early morning, and few people were upon the road, although since the first light of dawn men had been working in field and forest. From a farmhouse off the road came the crowing of a cock and the creak of a cumbrous handmill hidden in a thick copse near by. Nicanor, sitting by the roadside where he had slept, ate the food remaining overnight in his wallet, and rolled his sheepskin cloak into a bundle for his shoulders. Behind him, from the road, came a man's voice, suddenly, singing a rollicking drinking-song. The singer brought up beside Nicanor, a black-haired man in a soiled leather jerkin and cap of shining brass, with a matted beard and narrow eyes, and a great leaf-shaped sword swinging at his thigh. This one hailed him heartily, in a loud voice.

"Good youth, canst tell me where I am?"

"Why, yes," said Nicanor, proud to display his knowledge of the locality. "This be the street a Saxon man at Ad Fines named to me Eormen—"

"Ad Fines? Thirty miles from Londinium? Now I could have sworn that yesternight I was in Tripontium, thrice thirty miles from there. I was there yesterday—or maybe that time a week ago. 'Tis a small failing of mine to go where I do not mean to go, and know not how I get there, when the wine is in me. But this way will do, and now I am so far upon it, I may as well go farther."

He sat down beside Nicanor.

"Dost know of any lord would have a fine stout serving-man?" he said with a wheedle. "One who can carve, be it swine or human, skilled with sword or sling, who can drive a chariot, pair or single-span?"

"Not I," Nicanor answered. "I be a stranger in these parts."

"Bound for Londinium?" asked the black-haired man.

"Nay, for the Christian church of Saint Peter's, on Thorney which is called the Isle of Brambles," said Nicanor, without guile.

"Why, then, I'll go there too," the stranger said amiably. "For I am most devilishly lost, driven from town and camp, the first time sober in a week; and money I must gain, or starve. Eh, Bacchus! the women—the women!" He sighed, shaking his black head dolefully.

"What concern had they with it?" Nicanor wished to know. "Did they turn thee out from camp and town?"

"Ay, boy, turned me out and turned me inside out," said the black-haired man, and grinned. "Never a little copper ass have I left upon me. See, now, our paths lie in the same direction, since my path is any path. Shall we go together? For I swear I'll not get lost again. Behold me, Valerius, sometime of the Ninth Legion at Ratæ, now, by the grace of God, of no legion at all. I have my tablet of discharge from service; a follower of fortune you see me, with my sword as long as the purse of him who hires it."

Nicanor, half shy, half pleased with his new acquaintance, told in turn his name and station.

"Thou and I will be good friends," the soldier said. "I love a lad of spirit, such as thou. I'll fight for thee and thou shalt steal for me. 'Tis a fair division of labor. Hear you how my tongue waggeth? For a week it hath been sleeping off the wine, and now that it be sober again, it runneth by itself. Come, friend, art ready?"

On the way Valerius talked irrepressibly, with many strange oaths and ejaculations, mixing his religions impartially. He told weird tales of life in camps and teeming cities, so that Nicanor's blood tingled, and he longed to go also and do these things of which he heard. The tales of Valerius did not always hang together, but Nicanor cared not at all for that. By and by Valerius took to asking questions, his tongue in his cheek at some of Nicanor's replies. In half an hour he had learned the boy's life, deeds, and ambitions, and had extracted a promise that Nicanor would get the worthy Tobias to provide him also with employment, preferably around the church, where would be fat pickings and little work. At noon they ate by the roadside with two kindly disposed merchants, and later continued on their way, meeting other folk, with whom Valerius passed the time of day.

So, toward sunset, they came with many others ahorse and afoot, to Thorney, the Isle of Brambles, at the foot of the road. And here Nicanor thought he had never seen anything so wonderful, and stood staring wide-eyed, while Valerius hummed his drinking-song and chewed a piece of metyl leaf, which turned his lips and teeth quite red.

For here the country broadened out into a great marsh, vast and spreading widely over the land, dotted with eyots, where birds flew low among the sedge. Away to west and east were low grim hills, with a sense of unending space and loneliness upon them. And at the foot of the street was the ford, crowded here with men—soldiers and serfs and freedmen—with horses and mules and heavy carts. Through the ford they all went splashing; and it was wide and shallow, marked out by stakes and with stepping-stones showing above the water. And beyond the ford, under the gray skies, was Thorney, the Bramble Isle, alive with a swarming throng of people. On the right of the island was Saint Peter's church, upon the spot where next Saint Peter's Abbey, and centuries later the great Westminster, would stand. It rose silent in a smother of confusion and a babel of noise of men shouting, and horses neighing, and the songs of boatmen on the Tamesis which bounded the southern end of the island. There was a temple of Apollo close beside it, for old gods and new dwelt side by side. To the ancient faith of their pagan fathers the aristocracy of Britain still held true; the new God was for slaves and humble folk, who had derived no benefits from the old creeds and were willing to try any which promised help. And old Rome had seen the rise and fall of many gods, for she was aged and very wise. Jupiter, best and greatest, Isis, Mithras, Astarte, Serapis—what was one more or less in her pantheon?

Around the church was a formless huddle of houses, thinning out and straggling at the water's edge; and fires were blazing here and there, and men were hurrying to set all in order for the night. For Thorney was a halting place where travellers from north and south and east and west rested a space and went their way—a noisy, crowded place, where centred traffic for all Britain passing to and from Londinium, the great port, and the greater inland cities.

All of this Nicanor took in with delighted eyes. He ran down to the ford, dodging between pack-mules and jolting two-wheeled carts, and slipping eel-like past other pedestrians, forgetting Valerius, who hurried after. He strode from stone to stone, splashed by straining horses that tugged beside him, and sprang to shore upon the island. So he won to his journey's end.

"Now to find that good man Tobias," quoth Valerius, and shook his wet feet daintily, as a cat that has stepped by accident in a puddle. "He will give thee food and lodging, which thou wilt share with me—so? Knowest thou his house? Jesus, Lord! Did ever man see the like of the nest of houses? Hey, friend!" He laid a hand on the shoulder of one passing. "Canst tell us where dwells the worthy Tobias, worker in ivory to the Christian Church?"

"Nay, not I," the man said, and hurried on. Over his shoulder he called back: "Ask the good priest yonder."

Valerius doffed his brazen cap to this holy man. He, in frock of sober gray, with head shaven to the line of the ears, and worn, pale face, walked toward the church, his beads swinging by one finger. At Valerius's question he looked up.

"The house next the open space on the right," he answered; raised two fingers in benediction upon them, and went his way. Valerius and Nicanor betook themselves to the house appointed.

It was then that Nicanor began to realize that he wished himself alone. Valerius hung to his arm affectionately, and Nicanor was too shy to shake him off. He did not know what to do; wherefore he did nothing. The house next the open space was low, of stone and timber. It was evident that Tobias was well-to-do. Valerius pounded upon the door; the heavy shutter of a window swung open, and a man's head peered out. It was a pink head, very bald, with flabby cheeks, a full-moon face, and pursed lips, and the beaked Hebraic nose of his father's race.

"Who comes?" the man asked, and stared at them.

Nicanor said:

"Art thou Tobias, the ivory carver?" and the pink head nodded.

Then Nicanor said:

"From Rathumus and Susanna his wife I come, and I am Nicanor, their son, and would be prentice to thee."

"And Valerius, thy friend," whispered Valerius, plucking at his sleeve.

"And Valerius, my friend," said Nicanor, obediently.

"Why, holy saints!" Tobias said. "From Susanna—and would be prentice to me! Hold a minute till I let thee in."

His pink head disappeared and the shutter slammed. Soon the door was opened, and Tobias welcomed them to his house. And a very good house it was, for Tobias was wealthy. He called his slave, and she brought food and wine, and they sat at the trestled board on cross-legged stools and ate until they could eat no more. Then Tobias asked questions, and Nicanor told of his home and of his parents and of his mother's words, while Valerius, full-fed, dozed with his head on the table. And as Nicanor talked, Tobias watched him, for to save his life the boy could not open his mouth without a tale coming out of it; and when he had ended Tobias rose and kissed him on both cheeks, and said:

"Thou'lt stay with me, boy, and learn all that I can teach thee, until thou'rt master-workman. And thou shalt live with me, and be my son, for sake of her who is thy mother—and it is not my fault that thou art not my son in very truth. Marry, but thou hast a silver tongue in that shock head of thine. Now come to bed; thy friend here is snoring like an ox. And in the morning we'll begin work, and one of my lads shall tell thee what to do."

So they roused up Valerius and took him off to a room with one window and a bed. And here Valerius, slipping out of his baldric, pulled the blanket from the bed, flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the floor, and was instantly as one dead.