"Oh, set me free!" cried Bissula, raising her clasped hands despairingly to the Tribune.
"That you may tell the Barbarians all you have seen and heard in our camp? No, little maid. You will stay--perhaps forever. Have no thought of escape! Here, countryman!" He beckoned to a soldier. "Take her to the new tent; keep guard there until I leave tonight; then Rignomer the Batavian will relieve you. And listen: tell my scribe that during the day he must see that she--" The rest was whispered in the ear of the Illyrian, who led the wondering, bewildered girl away by the arm.
Ausonius and Saturninus parted without exchanging a single word: the latter saluted respectfully; but the angry Prefect did not, or would not, see the farewell.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Ever since the preceding day the rain clouds, which had so long densely veiled the mountain peaks and hung in gray curtains to the shore of the lake, had grown lighter and lighter. Scattered fragments still floated over the forest; but the mists were dispersing from Sentis and Tödi. And before the sun of that day sank behind the wooded heights of the western shore, it burst through the cloud rack for the first time in a long while, illumining lake and country for a few minutes with a blood-red glow. The fishes leaped greedily after the flies which were sunning themselves in the beams and flew feebly, with damp wings, close to the surface of the water: then the radiant ball disappeared behind the long cloud curtain.
The herons flew screaming from the rushes toward the land. The wind seemed to be rising. The clouds swept across the sky, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. The waves of the lake, obeying the former course of the wind, rolled in a direction opposite to the clouds above them.
The Batavian mercenaries of the Lower Rhine were encamped outside of the northern gate of the camp, the Porta Prætoria, but a little toward the west. The centurion, a man about forty years old, long in the service of Rome, who was adorned with neck-chains and various badges of honor on his breast-plate bestowed for gallant deeds, was fanning the smoking fire, which they were loath to have die out in the cold damp woods.
"There!" he muttered, "there it goes. I invoked both gods, Vulcan and Loki, in vain. Vulcan won't help me, because I am a Barbarian; Loki because I serve the Romans. We mercenaries no longer have any gods to aid us, because we belong to no nation."
"Ha, Rignomer," laughed another in the group, a youth whose downy red beard was just beginning to grow, "I care for only one god among them all--the god of victory."
"And he, Odin, is the very one who has deserted us, Brinno. Everywhere the Germans are conquering; that is, the peoples who are fighting against Rome, not we German mercenaries, who battle for the Cæsar. And in every conflict the men who bleed are we mercenaries."