y drawn up behind its ramparts, waiting for they knew
not what. Here and there upon the heights they could see small bodies
of legionaries who defended themselves against light troops of the
enemy, until overwhelmed by the Spanish infantry that scaled the hills
and cut them to pieces; while to every prayer that the dictator should
march out to their support, he returned one grim answer.

"They deserted their posts in the passes. Rome needs not such
soldiers."

So, company by company, the guards of the defiles, terrified or lured
away to the ridges by the ruse of the cattle and the blazing fagots,
fell ingloriously before their comrades' eyes, as being men not worth
the effort to succour. The rear-guard of the invaders had already made
its way through the pass, while the Carthaginian van was well on into
the valley of the Volturnus. Now, too, the African light troops
disappeared, and, at last, the white tunics of the Spaniards, gay with
their purple borders, glittered for a moment on the hilltops, and then,
their work of death completed, sank away behind the ridges to fall back
and join their comrades in a march of new destruction through a new
country.

VIII.

DISGRACE.

While these things were happening, for the most part in the sight of
all, Sergius had been able to gain a moment's speech with the dictator.
Forcing his way through the crowd of tribunes and officers who thronged
the praetorium, he had found Fabius seated before his tent, and had
told his story in the fewest words possible.

Naked but for his torn tunic and his cothurni, covered from head to
foot with blood and mire, his left arm hanging useless, and his face
like the face of a dead man, neither his miserable plight nor his story
brought softness to the stern lips and brow of the general.

"You have come to tell me this?" he said, when the other had finished
speaking. "Do I not know it _now_?" and he pointed to the heights.
Then he turned away and spoke with some one at his side, while Sergius
stood, with downcast eyes, swaying and scarcely able to keep his feet.

Among those around him his fate seemed hardly a matter of conjecture,
but a thrill went through the company when Minucius, who had been
vainly urging the dictator to support the guards of the passes, now
turned away in disgust, and, noting the disgraced officer, as if for
the first time, cried out in a loud voice:--

"What, my friend! have not the lictors attended to you,