debtors; it stands by the Vindelician gate."

Fulvius was in a moment surrounded; the centurion laid hold of his
shoulder, four men seized his arms.

"Oh, Felicitas!" sighed he, utterly helpless.

"I will save her! I will go to her immediately!" cried Crispus, and he
hastened away.

He was about to turn the comer, when there sounded suddenly the
hoof-strokes of a horseman riding along in mad haste, followed by a
tumultuous crowd: soldiers, burghers, women, children--all pell-mell.

"One of our Moorish horsemen!" cried the centurion, as he caught the
horse's bridle. "Jarbas! Comrade in arms! What is the matter?"

The rider, who was dripping with water, raised himself high in the
saddle; he had lost helmet and shield, he held a broken spear in his
right hand, blood streamed over his naked left arm.

"Tell the Tribune," cried he in a hoarse voice, as if making a last
effort. "I can do no more--the arrow in my neck--they are there--close
the gates--the Germans stand before the town!" And dropping the bridle,
he fell backwards from his horse.

He was dead!

CHAPTER VI.

Was it actually so? Did the Germans stand indeed before the gates of
Juvavum?

The burghers racked their brains in tormenting uncertainty. They could
learn nothing more at present of what had happened without the walls;
the mouth that might have given farther information was silent for
ever.

The gates were kept carefully shut. When the news first reached the
Capitol, Leo, the Tribune, had sprung from his couch, "To horse!" cried
he; "out, before the walls!" But with a cry of pain he had sunk back in
the arms of his slave; and he did not wish to entrust to another the
dangerous enterprise of a nightly reconnaissance outside the gates,
against an enemy certainly far superior in numbers. Severus, the
commander of the volunteers in the town, had only infantry at his
disposal. With these alone, he could not and would not advance against
the barbarians in the night. He contented himself with occupying the
towers and gates. The strengthened guard on the ramparts watched and
listened attentively in the mild night air; but there was nothing
unusual to be observed, no light in the neighbourhood, no camp-fires in
the distance, which the advancing Germans, with wives and children,
men-servants and maidens, with herds, carts and waggons, certainly
could not dispense with, and which it was not their custom to
extinguis