CHAPTER III.

As we have seen, the Romans were still ignorant whether the Barbarians
were aware of the bands approaching simultaneously from several
directions to menace the inhabitants of the forest with destruction.
Preparations had been made so secretly that the commanders believed it
possible to take the foe completely by surprise. For weeks not a German
had been allowed to pass the guards on the very outermost line of Roman
territory, which, it is true, had been greatly diminished in the course
of the last three or four generations. The right of traffic at the
stations on the southern shore had been withdrawn a still longer time,
on the pretext of alleged violations of the conditions of such
intercourse. Roman traders had not ventured recently within the
precincts occupied by neighbors who were justly irritated by such
severity.

The sentinels on the frontier reported that nothing unusual could be
seen from the watch towers. The people went about their work in field
and forest as usual, tended their numerous flocks, hunted or fished;
apparently they thought neither of defence nor flight.

Once, it is true, one of the _speculae_ reported that, late one night, a
fire had suddenly blazed upon a mountain peak probably several miles
from the lake and, after a short interval, as suddenly vanished. The
Alemanni called the towering height, whose summit was visible for many
a mile, the Sacred Mountain, the Holy Mountain, and Odin's Mountain,
and the name has clung to it tenaciously. True, in later times the
"sacred" related to Christian consecration; but at the present day the
stately castle on that majestic height bears the title of Heiligenberg.
On the spot where Odin's ash-trees then rustled, the breeze now sweeps
across the flower-beds of a beautiful garden.

The report was unheeded. Forest fires, even at night, were not unusual
among the Germans, who in their labor of clearing the ground often
required, in the place of the axe, the aid of the swifter flame. During
the next few days also everything remained quiet.

On the morning after that night--it was a few days prior to the Romans'
march across the height of Meersburg, already described--a youth
emerged from the dense woods stretching for miles in a northwesterly
direction toward the Holy Mountain, a youth whose figure was as
straight, tall, and slender as a young pine. The hood of lynx-skin
fluttering from his shoulders like a