stifling clouds, as a mule,
laden with farm produce and driven by a burly countryman, trudged
reluctantly along.

Yet, though the scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from
being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come. For this
spot was near "cool Praeneste," one of the favourite resorts of Latium to
the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive
heat of the capital. And they were wise in their choice; for Praeneste,
with its citadel, which rose twelve hundred feet over the adjoining
country, commanded in its ample sweep both the views and the breezes of
the whole wide-spreading Campagna. Here, clustering round the hill on
which stood the far-famed "Temple of Fortune," lay the old Latin town of
the Praenestians; a little farther westward was the settlement founded
some thirty odd years before by Sulla as a colony. Farther out, and
stretching off into the open country, lay the farmhouses and villas,
gardens and orchards, where splendid nuts and roses, and also wine, grew
in abundant measure.

A little stream ran close to the highway, and here an irrigating
machine[1] was raising water for the fields. Two men stood on the
treadmill beside the large-bucketed wheel, and as they continued their
endless walk the water dashed up into the trough and went splashing down
the ditches into the thirsty gardens. The workers were tall,
bronze-skinned Libyans, who were stripped to the waist, showing their
splendid chests and rippling muscles. Beside the trough had just come
two women, by their coarse and unpretentious dress evidently slaves,
bearing large earthen water-pots which they were about to fill. One of
the women was old, and bore on her face all the marks which a life of
hard manual toil usually leaves behind it; the other young, with a
clear, smooth complexion and a rather delicate Greek profile. The
Libyans stopped their monotonous trudge, evidently glad to have some
excuse for a respite from their exertions.

[1] Water columbarium.

"Ah, ha! Chloe," cried one of them, "how would you like it, with your
pretty little feet, to be plodding at this mill all the day? Thank the
Gods, the sun will set before a great while. The day has been hot as
the lap of an image of Moloch!"[2]

[2] The Phoenician god, also worshipped in North Africa, in whose idol
was built a fire to consume human sacrifices.

"Well, Hasdrubal," said Chloe, the younger woman, with a pert toss of
he