Farther off, twelve soldiers, stretched on the floor, were playing at knuckle-bones.
"By Hercules!" cried Scuda, "I'd rather be the meanest beggar in Constantinople than the first man in a mouse-trap like this. Can you call this an existence, Publius? Answer me honestly. Is this living? To think that outside barracks and camps the future has nothing in store for one; that one must rot in this sickening marsh without ever catching a glimpse of the world again!"
"Yes," assented Publius; "it's a fact that life here isn't precisely gay; but on the other hand, it's peaceful!"
The knuckle-bones pre-occupied the attention of the old captain. Pretending to listen to the gossipings of his superior officer, and fully to agree with the drift of his remarks, he followed with an interested eye the game of the legionaries. He said to himself, "If the red aims well, he'll certainly win."
However, by way of politeness, Publius asked Scuda, with a show of attention—
"Why, by the way, have you brought down on yourself the indignation of the Prefect Helvidius?"
"A woman, a friend of mine, was at the bottom of it, a girl...."
And Marcus Scuda, in a fit of garrulous intimacy, confided to the ear of the old centurion that the Prefect, "that old goat of a Helvidius," had grown jealous on account of the special favours conferred on him, Marcus, by a certain frail lady, a Lydian.
Now Scuda wanted, by rendering some important service, to win back the good-will of the Prefect; and he had resolved upon a plan.
Not far from Cæsarea, in the fortress of Macellum, dwelt Julian and Gallus, the cousins of the reigning Emperor Constantius, and the nephews of Constantine the Great. These two were the last representatives of the luckless house of the Flavii. On his accession to the throne, fearing rivals, Constantius had assassinated his uncle, the father of Julian and Gallus, Julian Constantius, the brother of Constantine. But Julian and Gallus themselves had been spared, and imprisoned in the solitary castle of Macellum, where they lived oppressed by perpetual fear of death. In great perplexity, knowing that the new Emperor loathed the two orphans who reminded him of his crime, Helvidius, Prefect of Cæsarea, desired, but dreaded, to divine the will of his master.