of Scotland and the passes of the Grampians. He
had seen Severus pass away, and had soldiered with his son. He had
fought in Armenia, in Dacia, and in Germany. They had made him a
centurion upon the field when with his hands he plucked out one by one
the stockades of a northern village, and so cleared a path for the
stormers. His strength had been the jest and the admiration of the
soldiers. Legends about him had spread through the army, and were the
common gossip round the camp fires--of his duel with the German axe-man
on the Island of the Rhine, and of the blow with his fist that broke the
leg of a Scythian's horse. Gradually he had won his way upwards, until
now, after quarter of a century's service, he was tribune of the fourth
legion and superintendent of recruits for the whole army. The young
soldier who had come under the glare of Maximin's eyes, or had been
lifted up with one huge hand while he was cuffed by the other, had his
first lesson from him in the discipline of the service.

It was nightfall in the camp of the fourth legion upon the Gallic shore
of the Rhine. Across the moonlit water, amid the thick forests which
stretched away to the dim horizon, lay the wild untamed German tribes.
Down on the river bank the light gleamed upon the helmets of the Roman
sentinels who kept guard along the river. Far away a red point rose and
fell in the darkness--a watch-fire of the enemy upon the further shore.

Outside his tent, beside some smouldering logs, Giant Maximin was
seated, a dozen of his officers around him. He had changed much since
the day when we first met him in the Valley of the Harpessus. His huge
frame was as erect as ever, and there was no sign of diminution of his
strength. But he had aged none the less. The yellow tangle of hair was
gone, worn down by the ever-pressing helmet. The fresh young face was
drawn and hardened, with austere lines wrought by trouble and privation.
The nose was more hawk-like, the eyes more cunning, the expression more
cynical and more sinister. In his youth, a child would have run to his
arms. Now it would shrink screaming from his gaze. That was what
twenty-five years with the eagles had done for Theckla the Thracian
peasant.

He was listening now--for he was a man of few words--to the chatter of
his centurions. One of them, Balbus the Sicilian, had been to the main
camp at Mainz, only four miles away, and had seen the Emperor Alexander
arrive that very day from Rome. Th