th and pride make masculine beauty, but it was the face of one
whom a man might trust and a woman love.

The butcher was on the point of returning an angry retort, half to hide
his awe of the other's rank, when a friend caught him by the arm.

"Do you not see it is Lucius Sergius Fidenas?" he whispered.

The result of the warning was still doubtful, when a sudden commotion
in the crowd about them drew the attention of all to a short, thick-set
man of middle age, in the light panoply of a mounted legionary. Cries
went up from all about:--

"It is Marcus Decius." "He is from the army." "Tell us! what news?"

For answer the newcomer turned from one to the other of his
questioners, with a dazed expression on his pale, drawn face.

"What shall I say, neighbours?" he muttered at last. "My horse fell
just out there on the Flaminian road, and I came here on foot. I have
eaten nothing for a day."

But they paid no attention to his wants, thronging around with almost
threatening gestures and crying:--

"What news? What news--not of yourself--of the army?--of the battle?"

"There was no battle, and there is no army," said the man, dully.

Sergius forced his way to the front and threw one arm about the
soldier. Then, turning to the crowd:--

"Stand back!" he cried, "and give him air. Do you not see the fellow
is fainting?"

"No battle--and yet no army," repeated Decius, in a murmurous monotone,
when, for a moment, there were silence and space around him. "We
marched by the Lake Trasimenus, and the fog lay thick upon us. Then
came a noise of shouts and clash of arms and shrieks, but we saw
nothing--only sometimes a great, white, naked body swinging a huge
sword, and again a black man buried in his horse's mane that waved
about him as he rushed by--only these things and our own men
falling--falling without ever a chance to strike or to see whence we
were stricken."

The crowd shuddered.

"And the elephants?"

"I did not see them. They say they are all dead."

"And the consul?"

"I do not know."

Just then the cripple from the steps was pushed forward.

"Flaminius is dead. He died fighting, as a Roman consul should. But
you? What are you, to let the pulse-eaters at him. You should have
seen how _we_ dealt with them off the Aegusian Islands."

"Or at Drepana?" sneered the horseman, roused from his lethargy by the
other's taunt.

"That was what a _patrician_ consul brought us to," muttered the