uck dumb with
astonishment and fear, had no time to prevent the heroic deaths. They
had barely recovered from their amazement when Margarid, seeing all her
family either dying or dead at her feet, raised to heaven her
blood-stained knife, and exclaimed in a calm and steady voice:

"Our daughters shall not be outraged; our children shall not be
enslaved; all of us, of the family of Joel the brenn of the tribe of
Karnak, dead, like our husbands and brothers, for the liberty of Gaul,
are on our way to rejoin them above. Perhaps, O Hesus, all this spilled
blood will appease you;" and with a hand which did not waver, she
plunged the dagger into her own heart.

All these terrible events which happened around the Chariot of Death I
was compelled to behold, as I lay nearby, pinned to the ground. My wife
Henory not having emerged from the enclosure, I concluded that she had
put an end to herself there, first putting to death my little ones
Sylvest and Syomara. My brain began to reel, my eyes closed; I felt
that I was dying, and thanked Hesus for not leaving me behind alone when
all my dear ones were to enter together upon the other life in the
unknown world.

But, no, it was here below, on earth, that I was to return to life--to
face new torments after those I had just undergone.

CHAPTER VIII.

AFTER THE BATTLE.

After I had beheld my mother and all the other women of the tribe die to
escape the shame and outrages of slavery, the blood which I had lost
caused me to swoon away. A long time passed in which I was bereft of
reason. When my senses returned, I found myself lying on straw, along
with a great number of other men, in a vast shed. At my first motion I
found myself chained by the leg to a stake driven into the ground. I was
half clad; they had left me my shirt and breeches, in a secret pocket of
which I had hidden the writings of my father and of my brother Albinik,
together with the little gold sickle, the gift of my sister Hena. A
dressing had been put on my wounds, which no longer occasioned me much
pain. I experienced only a great weakness and dizziness which made my
last memories a confused mass. I looked about me. I was one of perhaps
fifty wounded prisoners, all chained to their litters. At the further
end of the shed were several armed men, who did not bear the appearance
of regular Roman troops. They were seated round a table, drinking and
singing. Some among them, who carried short-handled scourge