ed.

'My saviours, my brothers!' said Orestes, politely ignoring the
laughter. 'How can I repay you? Is there anything in which my office
here enables me--I will not say to reward, for that would be a term
beneath your dignity as free barbarians--but to gratify you?'

'Give us three days' pillage of the quarter!' shouted some one.

'Ah, true valour is apt to underrate obstacles; you forget your small
numbers.'

'I say,' quoth the Amal--'I say, take care, Prefect.--If you mean to
tell me that we forty couldn't cut all the throats in Alexandria in
three days, and yours into the bargain, and keep your soldiers at bay
all the time--'

'Half of them would join us!' cried some one. 'They are half our own
flesh and blood after all!'

'Pardon me, my friends, I do not doubt it a moment. I know enough of the
world never to have found a sheep-dog yet who would not, on occasion,
help to make away with a little of the mutton which he guarded. Eh, my
venerable sir?' turning to Wulf with a knowing bow.

Wulf chuckled grimly, and said something to the Amal in German about
being civil to guests.

'You will pardon me, my heroic friends,' said Orestes, 'but, with your
kind permission, I will observe that I am somewhat faint and disturbed
by late occurrences. To trespass on your hospitality further would be
an impertinence. If, therefore, I might send a slave to find some of my
apparitors-'

'No, by all the gods!' roared the Amal, 'you're my guest now--my lady's
at least. And no one ever went out of my house sober yet if I could help
it. Set the cooks to work, my men! The Prefect shall feast with us like
an emperor, and we'll send him home to-night as drunk as he can wish.
Come along, your Excellency; we're rough fellows, we Goths; but by the
Valkyrs, no one can say that we neglect our guests!'

'It is a sweet compulsion,' said Orestes, as he went in.

'Stop, by the bye! Didn't one of you men catch a monk.?'

'Here he is, prince, with his elbows safe behind him.' And a tall,
haggard, half-naked monk was dragged forward.

'Capital! bring him in. His Excellency shall judge him while dinner's
cooking' and Smid shall have the hanging of him. He hurt nobody in the
scuffle; he was thinking of his dinner.'

'Some rascal bit a piece out of my leg, and I tumbled down,' grumbled
Smid.

'Well, pay out this fellow for it, then. Bring a chair, slaves! Here,
your Highness, sit there and judge.'

'Two chairs!' said some one; 'the Ama