the body of a
fellow creature from which the immortal soul has been reluctantly and
forcefully expelled, when a loud cry from Thrasea, who, having lagged a
step or two behind, was later in discovering the corpse, aroused him from
his melancholy stupor.

"Alas! alas! ah me!" cried the half-sobbing freedman, "my friend, my more
than friend, my countryman, my kinsman, Medon!"

"Ha! dost thou recognize the features? didst thou know him who lies so
coldly and inanimately here before us?" cried the excited youth, "whose
slave was he? speak, Thrasea, on thy life! this shall be looked to
straightway; and, by the Gods! avenged."

"As I would recognize mine own in the polished brass, as I do know my
father's sister's son! for such was he, who lies thus foully slaughtered.
Alas! alas! my countryman! wo! wo! for thee, my Medon! Many a day, alas!
many a happy day have we two chased the elk and urus by the dark-wooded
Danube; the same roof covered us; the same board fed; the same fire warmed
us; nay! the same fatal battle-field robbed both of liberty and country.
Yet were the great Gods merciful to the poor captives. Thy father did buy
me, Arvina, and a few years of light and pleasant servitude restored the
slave to freedom. Medon was purchased by the wise consul, Cicero, and was
to have received his freedom at the next Saturnalia. Alas! and wo is me,
he is now free forever from any toils on earth, from any mortal master."

"Nay! weep not so, my Thrasea," exclaimed the generous youth, laying his
left hand with a friendly pressure on the freedman's shoulder, "thou shalt
have all means to do all honor to his name; all that can now be done by
mortals for the revered and sacred dead. Aid me now to remove the body,
lest those who slew him may return, and carry off the evidences of their
crime."

Thus speaking, he thrust the unlighted end of the torch into the ground,
and lifting up the shoulders of the carcase, while Thrasea raised the
feet, bore it away a hundred yards or better, and laying it within the
open arch-way of an old tomb, covered the mouth with several boughs torn
from a neighboring cypress.

Then satisfied that it would thus escape a nearer search than it was
likely would be made by the murderers, when they should find that it had
been removed, he walked away very rapidly toward his home.

Before he left the burial ground, however, he wiped the dagger carefully
in the long grass, and hid it in the bosom of his tunic.