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angered, most imminently, he perceived, his possession of power. He was of course greatly enraged. He caused Rhea to be shut up in close imprisonment, and as for the boys, he ordered them to be thrown into the Tiber. The Tiber was at some considerable distance from Alba; but it was probably near the place where Rhea had resided in her retirement, and where the children were born. A peasant of that region was intrusted with the task of throwing the children into the river. Whether his official duty in undertaking this commission required him actually to drown the boys, or whether he was allowed to give the helpless babes some little chance for their lives, is not known. At all events he determined that in committing the children to the stream he would so arrange it that they should float away from his sight, in order that he might not himself be a witness of their dying struggles and cries. He accordingly put them upon a species of float that he made,--a sort of box or trough, as would seem from the ancient descriptions, which he had hollowed out from a log,--and disposing their little limbs carefully within this narrow receptacle, he pushed the frail boat, with its navigators still more frail, out upon the current of the river. [Illustration: FAUSTULUS AND THE TWINS.] The name of the peasant who performed this task was Faustulus. The peasant also who subsequently,--as will hereafter appear,--found and took charge of the children, is spoken of by the ancient historians as Faustulus, too. In fact we might well suppose that no man, however rustic and rude, could give his time and his thoughts to two such babes long enough to make an ark for them, for the purpose of making it possible to save their lives, and then place them carefully in it to send them away, without becoming so far interested in their fate, and so touched by their mute and confiding helplessness, as to feel prompted to follow the stream to see how so perilous a navigation would end. We have, however, no direct evidence that Faustulus did so watch the progress of his boat down the river. The story is that it was drifted along, now whirling in eddies, and now shooting down over rapid currents, until at last, at a bend in the river, it was thrown upon the beach, and being turned over by the concussion, the children were rolled out upon the sand. The neighboring thickets soon of course resounded with their plaintive cries. A mother wolf who was sle
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