ninus insisted that Bissula should be lodged
among the wives of the freedmen and female slaves who occupied some
tents a long distance from the Prefect's. The young girl herself paid
little heed to the discussion between the two Romans, whose meaning she
scarcely understood.

Released by the Tribune from the fear of death, and soothed by the
presence of her honored friend, her young cheerful heart soon
accommodated itself to the new condition of affairs,--not through
recklessness, but through childish ignorance of the perils which
possibly threatened her. Her grandmother was not discovered; her
faithful servant had not been captured; she herself was certainly
secure in the presence and under the eyes of her friend, the most
aristocratic man in the Roman camp. He would not let a hair of her head
be harmed, she knew.

True, the thought weighed heavily upon her heart as soon as she was
captured that she herself was solely to blame for her misfortune. If
she had obeyed the well-meant counsel--she was on the verge of tears;
experience had taught the value of the advice--she would now have been
safe and sheltered with her grandmother, though also with Adalo. And
owing him a debt of gratitude! She crushed the tears on her long
lashes. No, she would not admit that he was right. Now she owed the
haughty Adeling nothing: that was certainly an advantage. "And"--she
shook her waving locks back defiantly--"they won't eat me here! Only
don't be afraid, Bissula," she said to herself; "and don't submit to
anything!"

She had trembled only a moment after her escape from Herculanus, when
her powerful deliverer measured her whole dainty figure with a look
under which she lowered her eyes in confusion. But when she again
raised those innocent child-eyes, the expression had vanished. And it
never returned.

Her master allowed her to spend the whole day with her "Father
Ausonius": only when it grew dark he appeared, with inexorable
firmness, to take her away; and he went with her himself to the tent
assigned to her, before which he stationed one of his Illyrian
countrymen as a sentinel all night.

Bissula never saw her friend's nephew, whom she feared, alone. She
confidently expected the restoration of her liberty when the camp
should be broken up and the Romans should withdraw from the country.
There would be no fighting, Ausonius repeatedly told her. So the
light-hearted girl regarded her captivity, which had lost all its
terrors,