oking down on prostrate Menecreta,
"get thee gone ere my lictors do thee further harm."

But she, with the obstinacy of a great sorrow, clung to his knees and
would not move.

"My lord's grace, have pity--'tis my child; an thou takest her from me
thou'lt part those whom the gods themselves have united--'tis my child,
my lord! hast no children of thine own?"

"What dost prate about?" he asked, still speaking roughly for he was
wroth with her and hated to see the gaping crowd of young, empty-headed
fools congregating round him and this persistent suppliant hanging round
his shins. "Thy child? who's thy child? And what hath thy child to do
with me?"

"She is but a babe, my lord," said Menecreta with timid, tender voice;
"her age only sixteen. A hand-maiden she was to Arminius Quirinius, who
gave the miserable mother her freedom but kept the daughter so that he
might win good money by and by through the selling of the child. My
lord's grace, I have toiled for six years that in the end I might buy my
daughter's freedom. Fifty aurei did Arminius Quirinius demand as her
price and I worked my fingers to the bone so that in time I might save
that money. But Arminius Quirinius is dead and I have only twenty aurei.
With the hat of disgrace on her head the child could have been knocked
down to me--but now! now! look at her, my lord, how beautiful she is!
and I have only twenty aurei!"

Taurus Antinor had listened quite patiently to Menecreta's tale. His
sun-tanned face clearly showed how hard he was trying to gather up the
tangled threads of her scrappy narrative. Nor did the lictors this time
try to interfere with the woman. The praefect apparently was in no easy
temper to-day, and when ill-humour seized him rods and flails were kept
busy.

"And why didst not petition me before?" he asked, after a while, when
Menecreta paused in order to draw breath.

And his face looked so fierce, his voice sounded so rough, no wonder the
poor woman trembled as she whispered through her tears:

"I did not dare, my lord--I did not dare."

"Yet thou didst dare openly to outrage the law!"

"I wanted my child."

"And how many aurei didst promise to Hun Rhavas for helping thee to
defraud the State?"

"Only five, my lord," she murmured.

"Then," he said sternly, "not only didst thou conspire to cheat the
State for whose benefit the sale of the late censor's goods was ordered
by imperial decree, but thou didst bribe another--a slave of