yptian redness, went secretly away. Thus were they
reduced to utter poverty. The king and the senate, greatly afflicted
with their general's calamities, sought for, but found not the slightest
trace of him.

In the meantime this unhappy family approached the sea; and finding a
ship ready to sail, they embarked in it. The master of the vessel
observing that the wife of Eustacius was very beautiful, determined to
secure her; and when they had crossed the sea, demanded a large sum of
money for their passage, which, as he anticipated, they did not possess.
Notwithstanding the vehement and indignant protestations of Eustacius,
he seized upon his wife; and beckoning to the mariners, commanded them
to cast the unfortunate husband headlong into the sea. Perceiving,
therefore, that all opposition was useless, he took up his two children,
and departed with much and heavy sorrow. "Merciful heaven," he exclaimed,
as he wept over his bereaved offspring, "your poor mother is lost; and,
in a strange land, in the arms of a strange lord, must lament her fate."

Travelling along, he came to a river, the water of which ran so high,
that it appeared hazardous in an eminent degree to cross with both the
children at the same time. One, therefore, he placed carefully upon the
bank, and then passed over with the other in his arms. This effected, he
laid it upon the ground, and returned immediately for the remaining
child. But in the midst of the river, accidentally glancing his eye
back, he beheld a wolf hastily snatch up the child, and run with it into
an adjoining wood. Half maddened at a sight so truly afflicting, he
turned to rescue it from the destruction with which it was threatened;
but at that instant a huge lion approached the child he had left; and
seizing it, presently disappeared. To follow was useless, for he was in
the middle of the water. Giving himself up, therefore, to his desperate
situation, he began to lament and to pluck away his hair, and would have
cast himself into the stream, had not Divine Providence preserved him.

Certain shepherds, however, observing the lion carrying off the child in
his teeth, pursued him with dogs, and by the peculiar dispensation of
heaven it was dropped unhurt. As for the other, some ploughmen witnessing
the adventure, shouted lustily after the wolf, and succeeded in
liberating the poor victim from its jaws. Now it happened that both the
shepherds and ploughmen resided in the same village, an