"And, Alex, you will not expose me in the paper?" questioned Harding.
Alex promised to be merciful to the public.
In final appeal, Harding said: "And you, Professor, you will not say it is a tough, hard formation and too nearly primitive to carry any treasure?"
The Professor assured him that faults and displacements were common in the richest mineral-bearing veins.
"Well," said Harding, "I was tired and nervous last night. I could not sleep, and so determined to get up and read for an hour. I happened to pick up a volume of Roman history, and became so absorbed in it that I read for an hour or two more than I ought to. I went to bed at last, and my body dropped to sleep in a moment, but my brain was still half awake, and for a while ran things on its own account in a confused sort of a way.
"I thought I was sitting here alone, when, suddenly, a stranger appeared and began to pace, slowly, up and down the room. He had an eye like a hawk, nose like an eagle's beak and an air that was altogether martial. His walk had the perfect, measured step of the trained veteran soldier. After watching him for a little space, I grew bold and demanded of him his name and business. When I spoke the sound of my own voice startled me, for he was more savage looking than a shift boss. He turned round to me—don't laugh, I pray you—and said:
"'I am that Scipio to whom Hannibal the terrible capitulated. I was proud of my Rome and my Romans. We were the "Iron Nation," truly. All that human valor and human endurance could do we accomplished. Amid the snows of the Alps and the sands of Africa we were alike invincible. We were not deficient either in brain power. We left monuments enough to abundantly establish that fact. To us the whole civilized world yielded fealty, but we were barbarians after all. Listen!'
"Just then there floated in through the open window what seemed a full diapason of far-off but exquisite music.
"'Do you know what that is?' he asked. 'It is the echo of the melody which the children of this Republic awaken, singing in their free schools. It smites upon and charms the ear of the sentinel angel, whose station is in the sun, through one-eighth of his daily round; those echoes that with an enchantment all their own ride on the swift pinions of the hours over all the three thousand miles between the seas.
"My Rome had nothing like that. We trusted alone to the law of might, and though we tried to be just, the slave was chained daily at our gates; we sold into slavery our captives taken in war; we fought gladiators and wild beasts for the amusement of our daughters and wives; we never learned to temper justice with mercy; only the first leaves of the book of knowledge were opened to us; our brains and our bodies were disciplined, but our hearts were darkened and we perished because we were no longer fit to rule.