Esca looked as if he understood him not. The Briton’s thoughts were wandering back to the tramp of columns and the clash of steel, and the gallant stand made against the invader by the white-robed warriors with their long swords, amongst whom he had been one of the boldest and the best.
“It is hard to strive against Rome,” said he, with a glowing cheek and sparkling eye. “Yet I cannot but think, if we had never been provoked to an attack, if we had kept steadily on the defensive, if we had moved inland as he approached, harassing and cutting him off whenever we saw an opportunity, but never suffering him to make one for himself—trusting more to our woods and rivers, and less to our own right hands—we might have tamed the eagle and clipped his wings, and beat him back across the sea at last. But what have I to do with such matters now?” he added, while his whole countenance fell in bitter humiliation. “I, a poor barbarian captive, and a slave here in Rome!”
Calchas studied his face with a keen scrutinising glance, then he laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, and said inquiringly—
“There is not a grey hair in your clustering locks, nor a wrinkle on your brow, yet you have known sorrow?”
“Who has not?” replied the other cheerfully; “and yet I never thought to have come to this.”
“You are a slave, and you would be free?” asked Calchas, slowly and impressively.
“I am a slave,” repeated the Briton, “and I shall be free. But not till death.”
“And after death?” proceeded the old man, in the same gentle inquiring tone.
“After death,” answered the other, “I shall be free as the elements I have been taught to worship, and into which they tell me I shall be resolved. What need I know or care more than that in death there will be neither pleasure nor pain?”
“And is not life with all its changes too sweet to lose on such terms as these?” asked the older man. “Are you content to believe that, like one walking through a quicksand, the footsteps you leave are filled up and obliterated behind you as you pass on? Can you bear to think that yesterday is indeed banished and gone for ever? That a to-morrow must come of black and endless night? Death should be really terrible if this is your conviction and your creed!”