In the course of the day a messenger secretly conveyed to the Roman camp a letter from Adalo, addressed to Saturninus and Ausonius. The young chieftain, on the pretext of inspecting the farthest outposts, had gone with his envoy from the top of the Holy Mountain through the whole seven fortifications encircling it to the last one at the foot, and then ridden with him into the forest which stretched between it and the Roman camp. Here he awaited the answer, his noble face pale and disfigured by the long mental conflict through which he had passed. When he heard in the distance the hoof-beats of the returning horse (evening had come, and the mountain peaks oh the opposite side of the lake were glowing with crimson light), he ran breathless to meet it.
"Well," he cried, "where is the answer to the letter?"
"They gave me no answer. Both the Roman generals--for I had them both called, as you ordered--read your letter before me with great, great astonishment. They talked together, with loud exclamations, in words I did not understand, not Roman ones. Then both turned to me, the older one, who was formerly in the country, speaking first: 'Tell your master the answer is: Never.' And the younger man added: 'Not even for this price.'"
Then Adalo suddenly fell prone like a young pine whose last prop above the last root has been cut by the axe. He had dropped face forward. The faithful attendant sprang from his horse, sat down on the grass, and took the senseless youth's head in his lap. Adalo lay unconscious a long time, fairly stupefied by grief. The stars were already shining in the sky, and the bats darting through the trees, when, panting for breath, he climbed the mountain.
"That was the last effort," he said to himself. "Nothing is left now except death--death in battle, not to save her, alas! only her corpse: for if shame be inflicted on her, she will not survive it."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
But, eagerly as Saturninus watched for the galleys expected from Arbor, another was to learn their anticipated departure long before he knew of it. This was Duke Hariowald.
On a wooded hill, the hill of Zio, named the Geerebühl, east of the Holy Mountain, almost directly opposite to Arbor, a little band of Alemanni spies watched night and day, one, relieved every hour, gazing steadily across the lake at the Hill of Mercury, the nearest height south of Arbor on the southern shore of the lake.
The region around this harbor fortress, which was wholly under Roman rule, was inhabited by colonists of various tribes: among them many Alemanni whom capture, or voluntary surrender and removal, had led to the better-tilled, more richly cultivated southern shore.
At noon on the day of Adalo's secret message a slender, almost invisible column of smoke rose from the Hill of Mercury on the southern shore: instantly a thick grayish-black cloud of smoke ascended from the Geerebühl on the north shore. This was clearly seen from the eastern side of the summit of the Holy Mountain,--the Hill of Mercury was not visible from it,--and one of the guards who constantly watched the Geerebühl, instantly rushed into the Duke's tent "Smoke is rising on Zio's Mountain! A high column of smoke."