of Providence in
those days; Rathumus and Susanna believed they heard Fate speaking by
the mouth of their angry son. Susanna's eyes filled with tears. Rathumus
nodded his great head gravely and slowly. Nicanor, overflowing with his
wrongs, strode up and down the hard earth floor in a passion. Again he
gave tongue to his lamentations.

"I am stronger than they--I shall conquer! Thou shalt see! I shall make
them acknowledge that I, son of Rathumus, am greater than they. This
shall be my revenge, and though it take me all the years of my life, I
shall win to it by fair means or foul."

"Son, son!" Rathumus said sternly. "Speak not thus rashly. For the gods,
and the gods alone, is vengeance."

But Susanna took her boy to his own loft, and there comforted him,
motherwise.

"Thou wilt yet get the better of them all, my son. That they should have
dared to treat thee so! But oh, be careful, for my sake! Now hearken. I
will have thy father pray that our gracious lord permit thee to go to
Christian Saint Peter's church, on Thorney, which is called the Bramble
Isle, to learn a trade. Though he be no believer in the Faith, our lord
is a good man, merciful unto us, his slaves, and I doubt not will give
consent. Then seek there a man by name of Tobias, a colonus and a worker
in ivory for the good Christian priests. He, it may be, will aid thee
for sake of her who is thy mother."

She stopped, then, and looked into his face. But he met her eyes without
a change, and never thought to question what her words might mean. For
he was very young; also his mother was his mother. So that Susanna
smiled, for pure joy and happiness, and said:

"He is a wise man, with goodly store of wealth. Also hath he been in far
strange countries, and seen right marvellous things. And he will take
thee to learn of him, if so be thou wilt say thou art son to Rathumus
and Susanna his wife. And so wilt thou become great, and very wise, and
loving."

So in the end, Nicanor started off alone in the world, with his parents'
blessing, which was all they had to give him, to find out whither this
Fate of his had called him.

III

Thus it was that Nicanor left his home in the gray northlands, up by the
rolling hills and the barren moors which lay under the great Wall of
Hadrian; and journeyed down the long road which led ever southward to
Londinium. Past Eboracum, on the Urus, that "other Rome," where the
Governor of Britain dwelt, famous as the station