ved this gloomy Roman, this renegade,
better than all who stood nearest to you?"

"There you are mistaken, fair Hilda," smiled the King, stroking her
hand.

"Yes," she answered, correcting herself; "doubtless you love Ammata
better; he is the apple of your eye."

"My father, on his death-bed, confided this brother (he was then only a
prattling boy) to my care. I cherished him in my inmost heart, and
reared him as though he were my own child," said Gelimer, tenderly. "It
is not love," he went on, "that binds me to Verus. What constrains me
to revere in him my guardian spirit on earth, to look up to him with
ardent gratitude, with blind, credulous trust, is the confidence, nay,
the superhuman certainty: yes," here he shuddered slightly, "it is a
revelation of God, a miracle."

"A miracle?" Hilda repeated.

"A revelation?" Gibamund asked incredulously, stopping before them.

"Both," replied the King. "Only, to understand it, you must know more,
you must know all, you must learn how my mind, my soul, was tossed to
and fro by conflicting powers; you must live through with me once more
my wanderings, my perils, and my deliverance. Yes, and you shall, you
who are my nearest and dearest, now and here; who knows when the
impending war will grant us another hour of leisure?

"Even in my earliest childhood, my father told me, I was not like
ordinary children; I dreamed, I asked questions beyond my years. Then,
it is true, came the happy days of boyhood: arms, arms, and again arms,
my only sport, my only labor, my only study. At that time I grew to the
power and the pleasure in the use of weapons--" his eyes flashed in the
moonlight.

"Which made you the hero of your people," cried Gibamund.

"But suddenly an end came. By chance the leader of the hundred who was
commanded to execute the order fell sick, and I was next in the list:
I, a lad of sixteen, was sent with my troop to witness the terrible
tortures of Romans, Catholics, who would not abjure their faith, in the
courtyard of this citadel. The shrieks of agony which pierced through
the thick walls had repeatedly roused the Carthaginians to
insurrection; it was absolutely necessary to guard the dungeons. I had
heard that such things were done; I was told that they were needful;
that the Catholics were all traitors to the kingdom, and the rack was
used only to compel them to reveal the secrets of their disloyal plans.
But I had never witnessed the scene. Now suddenly