her than the veritable "old King Cole" of our nursery
jingle--was a "jolly old soul," and a jolly old soul is very rarely an
independent or ambitious one. So long as he could have "his pipe and his
bowl" not, of course, his long pipe of tobacco that all the Mother
Goose artists insist upon giving him--but the reed pipe upon which his
musicians played--so long, in other words, as he could live in ease and
comfort, undisturbed in his enjoyment of the good things of life by his
Roman over-lords, he cared for no change. Rome took the responsibility
and he took things easily. But this very day, while his daughter Helena
was floating down the river to meet him on the strand at Wivanloe, he
was returning from an unsuccessful boar-hunt in the Essex woods, very
much out of sorts--cross because he had not captured the big boar he
had hoped to kill, cross because his favorite musicians had been
"confiscated" by the Roman governor or propraetor at Londinium (as
London was then called), and still more cross because he had that day
received dispatches from Rome demanding a special and unexpected tax
levy, or tribute, to meet the necessary expenses of the new Emperor
Diocletian.

Something else had happened to increase his ill temper. His "jolly old
soul," vexed by the numerous crosses of the day, was thrown into still
greater perplexity by the arrival, just as he stood fretful and chafing
on the shore at Wivanloe, of one who even now was with him
on the trireme, bearing him company back to his palace at
Camolodunum--Carausius the admiral.

This Carausius, the admiral, was an especially vigorous, valorous, and
fiery young fellow of twenty-one. He was cousin to the Princess Helena
and a prince of the blood royal of ancient Britain. Educated under the
strict military system of Rome, he had risen to distinction in the naval
force of the Empire, and was now the commanding officer in the northern
fleet that had its central station at Gessoriacum, now Boulogne, on the
northern coast of France. He had chased and scattered the German pirates
who had so long ravaged the northern seas, had been named by the Emperor
admiral of the north, and was the especial pride, as he was the dashing
young leader, of the Roman sailors along the English Channel and the
German shores.

The light barge of the princess approached the heavier boat of the king,
her father. At her signal the oarsmen drew up alongside, and, scarce
waiting for either boat to more t