rom many lands. Nicanor, shy and
fierce-eyed and of shaggy hair, tramping steadily southward in the wake
of the swift-footed soldiers, felt that the world was a very mighty
place, and never had he dreamed of such great people. As he drew nearer
Londinium, the traffic and the bustle increased. More troops kept coming
up; and again others passed them, going down. And now, among the low
hills, he caught glimpses of fair and stately houses gleaming among
wooded groves; and there were huts of plastered mud, straw-thatched,
where dwelt gaunt, collared slaves.

On either side of the road were broad meadows where sheep were grazing;
and ploughed fields where men and women stood yoked like cattle and
strained to the cut of the ploughman's lash; and quarries where men
toiled endlessly under heart-breaking loads, driven on by blows and
curses. These were the things which Nicanor had known all his life, for
his father worked, and his mother. But when he met a fat and perfumed
man, riding upon a milk-white mule, with servants before and behind him,
and beasts of burden bearing hampers,--then Nicanor could not
understand. He bowed before the fat man deeply, thinking him the great
Lord Governor himself; and men by the roadside laughed and mocked him.
So that he fought them, and came out of his second conflict very
valiantly, with a closed eye and a lip badly cut.

And so, in the fulness of time, he came to the last day of his journey.

It was a gray day, touched with the smoky breath of Autumn, with all the
country veiled in softest haze. It was very early morning, and few
people were upon the road, although since the first light of dawn men
had been working in field and forest. From a farmhouse off the road came
the crowing of a cock and the creak of a cumbrous handmill hidden in a
thick copse near by. Nicanor, sitting by the roadside where he had
slept, ate the food remaining overnight in his wallet, and rolled his
sheepskin cloak into a bundle for his shoulders. Behind him, from the
road, came a man's voice, suddenly, singing a rollicking drinking-song.
The singer brought up beside Nicanor, a black-haired man in a soiled
leather jerkin and cap of shining brass, with a matted beard and narrow
eyes, and a great leaf-shaped sword swinging at his thigh. This one
hailed him heartily, in a loud voice.

"Good youth, canst tell me where I am?"

"Why, yes," said Nicanor, proud to display his knowledge of the
locality. "This be the stre