"

Juba had listened as if he was constrained against his will. When the
priest stopped he started, and began to speak impetuously, and unlike his
ordinary tone. He placed his hands violently against his ears. "Stop!" he
said, "no more. _I_ will not betray them; no: I _need_ not betray them;"
he laughed; "the black moor does the work himself. Look," he cried,
seizing the priest's arm, and pointing to a part of the forest, which
happened to be to windward. "You are in their number, priest, who can
foretell the destinies of others, and are blind to their own. Read there,
the task is not hard, your coming fortunes."

His finger was directed to a spot where, amid the thick foliage, the gleam
of a pool or of a marsh was visible. The various waters round about
issuing from the gravel, or drained from the nightly damps, had run into a
hollow, filled with the decaying vegetation of former years, and were
languidly filtered out into a brook, more healthy than the vast reservoir
itself. Its banks were bordered with a deep, broad layer of mud, a
transition substance between the rich vegetable matter which it once had
been, and the multitudinous world of insect life which it was becoming. A
cloud or mist at this time was hanging over it, high in air. A harsh and
shrill sound, a whizzing or a chirping, proceeded from that cloud to the
ear of the attentive listener. What these indications portended was plain.
"There," said Juba, "is what will tell more against you than imperial
edict, informer, or proconsular apparitor; and no work of mine."

He turned down the bank and disappeared. Agellius and his guest looked at
each other in dismay. "It is the locusts," they whispered to each other,
as they went back into the cottage.

CHAPTER XV.

A VISITATION.

The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which the
countries included in the Roman empire were exposed, extended from the
Atlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Red Sea
to Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in history
of clouds of the devastating insect crossing the Black Sea to Poland, and
the Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its species as it is
wide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood, with a sort of family
likeness, yet with distinct attributes, as we read in the prophets of the
Old Testament, from whom Bochart t