d went down with a
pierced neck, but the next instant Falto was beside him, atoning for
his stupid folly, the whole side of his head cleft away by a stroke
from a Gallic long-sword.

"One rush and we have the old man surrounded," exhorted Dumnorix, when
only Pausanias barred the way.

There was a growl and a bound, and straight at the foremost attacker
flew Argos, Mamercus's great British mastiff, who had silently slipped
on to the scene. The assailant fell with the dog's fangs in his
throat. Again the gladiators recoiled, and before they could return to
the charge, back into the peristylium rushed Drusus, escaped from
Cappadox, with that worthy and Mago and Agias, just released, at his
heels.

"Here's your man!" cried Gabinius, who still kept discreetly in the
rear.

"Freedom and ten _sestertia_[117] to the one who strikes Drusus down,"
called Dumnorix, feeling that at last the game was in his hands.

[117] About $400.

But Mamercus had made of his young patron an apt pupil. All the
fighting blood of the great Livian house, of the consulars and
triumphators, was mantling in Drusus's veins, and he threw himself
into the struggle with the deliberate courage of an experienced
warrior. His short-sword, too, found its victims; and across Falto's
body soon were piled more. And now Drusus was not alone. For in from
the barns and fields came running first the servants from the stables,
armed with mattocks and muck-forks, and then the farm-hands with their
scythes and reaping hooks.

"We shall never force these doors," exclaimed Gabinius, in despair, as
he saw the defenders augmenting.

Dumnorix turned to his men.

"Go, some of you. Enter from behind! Take this rabble from the rear.
In fair fight we can soon master it."

A part of the gladiators started to leave the atrium, Gabinius with
them. An instant later he had rushed back in blank dismay.

"Horsemen! They are dismounting before the house. There are more than
a score of them. We shall be cut to pieces."

"We have more than fifty," retorted Dumnorix, viciously. "I will
sacrifice them all, rather than have the attack fail!--" But before he
could speak further, to the din of the fighting at the doors of the
peristylium was added a second clamour without. And into the atrium,
sword in hand, burst Caius Curio, and another young, handsome,
aquiline-featured man, dressed in a low-girt tunic, with a loose,
coarse mantle above it,--a man known to history as Marc