Chapter Eighteen.
The Charioteer.
“I shall never be able to do it, Serge,” said Marcus, nervously, as he stood with his old companion looking admiringly at a pair of fiery-looking little steeds harnessed to a low chariot just big enough to afford room for three.
The little pair were being held, stamping and covering their sides with the foam they champed from their bits, by a short, broad-shouldered, swarthy driver, who had his work to restrain the impatient little animals.
They were less in size than what would now be termed cobs, almost ponies, but beautifully formed, arched-necked and heavily maned and tailed, a pair that had excited admiration in the boy’s eyes as soon as he saw the chariot to which he had been led. But they were almost wild, and ready to resent the buffets given by their driver with teeth and hoofs.
“A chariot to be proud of,” Serge had growled in the boy’s ear. “Why, a captain needn’t wish for better. I don’t know what the master will say when he sees you.”
“Oh, don’t talk about the meeting, Serge. I feel so excited,” replied the boy, and then he added the words which head this chapter.
“Never be able to do what?” cried the old soldier.
“Manage the chariot. It seems too much for me.”