e broken, the nephew cried to the
uncle: "To Felicitas! Through the ford!" and as they had stood
together, so they now ran together towards the river below the bridge,
for that was held by the enemy.

But the stout Crispus, although he had quickly thrown away spear and
shield, was soon left far behind the agile stone-mason.

An Alemannian horseman, with a youth running at his side, followed
both.

Crispus was soon overtaken.

His ridiculous appearance challenged the rider to give him a blow on
the casserole covering his head in the place of a helmet, it fell over
his eyes and nose, from which poured a stream of blood, he gave a loud
cry and fell to the ground; he thought he was dead.

But he soon came back to the agreeable certainty of life, when the
foot-soldier, who had remained by him, roughly tore the casserole from
his head. Crispus sprang up, gasping for breath, the German laughed in
his big, fat, highly-astonished face.

"Ha! this Roman hero has had good provender. And this nose is not red
with its own blood or with water either. Ho, friend, I will set thee
free, if thou wilt reveal to me where in Juvavum the best wine can be
got. It seems to me thou art the man to know it."

Crispus, so pleasantly spoken to, recovered himself quickly, now that
he was quite convinced that he was not dead, and would not have to die
for the fatherland.

He drew a deep breath and spoke, raising his hand as an oath:

"I swear as a Roman burgher, Jaffa, the good Jew, near the Basilica,
has the sweetest. He is not baptized--but neither is his Falernian.

"Excellent!" cried the Alemannian. "Come, ye friends!"--a whole crowd
of Alemanni and Bajuvaren were shaking hands close about him--"to Jaffa
the Jew, to drink our gratitude to the god Ziu for our pleasant
victory! Thou, fat fellow, lead on, and if, contrary to thine oath, it
is sour, this Jew's wine, we will drown thee therein."

But Crispus was not alarmed; he rejoiced, on the contrary, that he
would now be able to drink gratis, as much as he wished, of the
choicest long-stored Cyprus wine, which hitherto had been quite beyond
his means. That it was to be drunk to the honour of the god Ziu did not
make the wine worse. "And," said he to himself, "it is at all events
better pleasing to God that we empty the Jew's wine-skins than those of
a good Christian."

He did not trouble about his house. "They will not interfere with my
old Ancilla; her wrinkles will protect her bet