the silence of the forest.

Cautiously raising his shield to his eyes and looking watchfully toward
the right, the Roman, with his thin figure drawn to its foil height,
waited several seconds longer: nothing stirred.

He now sprang in two bounds across the open ground to the hut of hay,
stooped and entered through the northern hole. Something rustled under
the thick grass, which seemed to be alive: something glided beneath
it--was it a weasel?--toward the opposite hole: only the waving motion
of the bundles of hay betrayed the direction.

Herculanus hastily grasped with his shield arm at the creature making
the rustling and lifted the broad short sword in his right for a
death-stroke. He seized something warm and drew it upward from the hay,
which fell on the right and left as he dragged forward a girl whose
face was covered with tangled red locks and blades of grass, through
which she gazed in mortal terror and fiery wrath at her assailant.

So strange, so bewitchingly beautiful was the young creature that
Herculanus uttered a fierce cry of pleasure. He had vowed that the
first moment he had the dangerous Barbarian alone within reach of his
sword, should be her last; and even now he did not really waver in the
resolve. Neither pity nor passion could influence a mind fixed solely
on his uncle's wealthy yet so much youthful beauty awakened a fleeting
desire for it: before he stabbed the foe, he would have one kiss from
those red lips. So, reserving his right hand for the death-blow, he
drew her closer to him with the left. The girl struggled with the
strength of despair. Turning her head as far as possible from him, she
uttered a cry of terror, like a dying fawn. It was only a moment's
delay of the assassin's thrust, but it saved her.

Before Herculanus could press his lips on her averted face a shadow
fell from outside upon the opening toward the lake, where the
struggling figures were now standing. "Murderer!" cried a deep voice;
and Herculanus, receiving a severe blow on the breast, staggered back,
loosing his hold upon his captive. Swiftly as the trout glides away,
the girl tried to slip through the opening; but she felt her arm seized
in the iron grasp of a much stronger hand, and looked up at another
helmeted Roman.

"Is it you, Tribune?" stammered Herculanus, hastily thrusting his sword
into the sheath.

The latter did not vouchsafe him a single word. "You are Bissula,
little one, are you not?" he asked,