Marcus was looking at a pin of a rather pretty design and wondering how Flavia, his betrothed, would like it, when it bent in his fingers. That pin had not been made for the handling of young men with hands so muscular as his. Marcus paid for the pin and tossed it into the river. He had no intention of making a gift like that to any one.
When they handled the charm necklaces they saw from the lightness that what looked like gold was not gold. It was so with all the peddler’s stock. The soldiers, seeing that the boys from the colony did not think the stuff worth buying, did not buy much themselves, nor did they drink much of his wine.
Ruffo said after Toto had gone that he did not always carry such a collection of trash as he had to-day. Sometimes he sold excellent fish-hooks and small tools. Marcus said that if he bought anything, he wanted a thing that was worth buying, and they began to throw quoits at a mark.
Marcus had seen traders before and dealt with them, but for some reason this peddler’s pack set him thinking. In their way of living a farmer made most of his own tools, and wishing them to last as long as possible, he made them well. It was the same with the baskets, the linen, the wool and the leather work, and the other things made at home. It was the same with the work done in the smithy of Muraena. He wished to have a reputation among his neighbors for making fine weapons. The men always put the greater part of their time on their farms, and since they had been in this new country, their planning and contriving how to make the soil produce more and [pg 181]more had been far more exciting than ever before. Each year a little more of the marsh or the waste land would be drained and cleared; each year the flocks and herds would be larger and more huts would be built. They were founding a new people.
In view of these great thoughts of the future, the glittering trinkets of the man with the trumpet looked small and worthless. Marcus began to see what was meant by the elders when they spoke of “gravity” as a virtue and “levity” as a rather foolish vice. Life depended very much on the way one took things; to take important things lightly, or give valuable time and thought to worthless objects left a man with the chaff on his hands instead of the good grain.
Something his father had told him a long time ago, when he was a little boy, came into Marcus’s mind. It was when he wanted something very much, and being little, cried because he could not have it and made himself quite miserable. His father came in just then and watched him for a minute or two. Then he said,
“My son, do you wish to be a strong man, when you grow big?”
“Y-yes,” sniffed the little fellow dolefully.
“You wish to be strong of soul and heart as you are in your body, so that no one can make [pg 182]you do anything you are not willing to do?”
“Yes, Father,” said the boy, with his puzzled dark eyes searching his father’s face.