ll places in the
world! It was as bad as if my own Father had painted himself blue!

'"No matter for the clothes," said the Pater. "They are only the fringe
of the trouble. It began before your time or mine. Rome has forsaken her
Gods, and must be punished. The great war with the Painted People broke
out in the very year the temples of our Gods were destroyed. We beat the
Painted People in the very year our temples were rebuilt. Go back
further still."... He went back to the time of Diocletian; and to listen
to him you would have thought Eternal Rome herself was on the edge of
destruction, just because a few people had become a little large-minded.

'_I_ knew nothing about it. Aglaia never taught us the history of our
own country. She was so full of her ancient Greeks.

'"There is no hope for Rome," said the Pater, at last. "She has forsaken
her Gods, but if the Gods forgive _us_ here, we may save Britain. To do
that, we must keep the Painted People back. Therefore, I tell you,
Parnesius, as a Father, that if your heart is set on service, your place
is among men on the Wall--and not with women among the cities."'

'What Wall?' asked Dan and Una at once.

'Father meant the one we call Hadrian's Wall. I'll tell you about it
later. It was built long ago, across North Britain, to keep out the
Painted People--Picts, you call them. Father had fought in the great
Pict War that lasted more than twenty years, and he knew what fighting
meant. Theodosius, one of our great Generals, had chased the little
beasts back far into the North before I was born. Down at Vectis, of
course, we never troubled our heads about them. But when my Father spoke
as he did, I kissed his hand, and waited for orders. We British-born
Romans know what is due to our parents.'

'If I kissed my Father's hand, he'd laugh,' said Dan.

'Customs change; but if you do not obey your Father, the Gods remember
it. You may be quite sure of _that_.

'After our talk, seeing I was in earnest, the Pater sent me over to
Clausentum to learn my foot-drill in a barrack full of foreign
auxiliaries--as unwashed and unshaved a mob of mixed barbarians as ever
scrubbed a breastplate. It was your stick in their stomachs and your
shield in their faces to push them into any sort of formation. When I
had learned my work the Instructor gave me a handful--and they were a
handful!--of Gauls and Iberians to polish up till they were sent to
their stations up-country. I did my best