d them.

Before one of these huts (a stag's antlers had been cut on the central
post for a house mark) on the day after Bissula's capture, a bright
fire was burning late in the evening, fed with pine cones which had
been protected from the wet under the stone closing the opening of a
cellar. It was supplied by a man about forty years old, whose cropped
hair showed that he was a slave; while the shape of his short face, his
dark eyes, high cheek bones and snub nose denoted that he was not of
German lineage. Suomar had bought him many years before in Vindonissa;
cheap enough, for Valentinian--or the slave dealer--had brought
countless captives from the Jazyge war.

In front of the fire, sheltered from the wind and smoke, old Waldrun
lay on a bearskin, her feet covered with another. Adalo was kneeling
beside her. Mirthfulness and wrath had vanished; deep sorrow clouded
his handsome face. He gave the blind woman some wine to drink from a
silver goblet. Both beaker and wine were booty wrested from the Roman.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Tell me everything once more, Zercho," he said earnestly, "until
Waldrun has recovered and can add what you did not see. I have not yet
clearly understood the one thing upon which all depends."

The bondman was now crouching beside the fire, trying to keep the smoke
from the white-haired woman with the wolf-skin he wore for a cloak. It
did not annoy her at all, but it helped him to avert his eyes from the
youth's searching gaze.

"It happened in this way, handsome neighbor. Directly after you leaped
down the slope in anger,--I saw it from the stable,--the little red
sprite ordered me to bury the master's coins (alas, there are very few
of them!) and the brass vessels and broken-handled jug which he
obtained three winters ago at Brigantium. I had already driven the cow,
the sheep, and the goats into the alder thicket.

"The next day I was to take the young mistress and her grandmother into
the marshes to Suomar, the master. But alas, the hot and cold cat,
which invisibly shakes the body like a mouse, often springs upon the
good old mistress. So it was the next day. The sufferer could hardly
stir her aged limbs from the couch; her strength was as feeble as a
dying torch; I almost had to carry her. But I could do this only
on solid ground: in the forest marshes I should have sunk with my
burden--strong bones weigh heavily. So, in the forest, the blind woman
was oblig