the Numidians. In virtue he was far my superior.'

'Then why was he on the Wall?' Una asked, quickly. 'They'd all done
something bad. You said so yourself.'

'He was the nephew, his Father had died, of a great rich man in Gaul who
was not always kind to his Mother. When Pertinax grew up, he discovered
this, and so his uncle shipped him off, by trickery and force, to the
Wall. We came to know each other at a ceremony in our Temple--in the dark.
It was the Bull Killing,' Parnesius explained to Puck.

'_I_ see,' said Puck, and turned to the children. 'That's something you
wouldn't quite understand. Parnesius means he met Pertinax in church.'

'Yes--in the Cave we first met, and we were both raised to the Degree of
Gryphons together.' Parnesius lifted his hand towards his neck for an
instant. 'He had been on the Wall two years, and knew the Picts well. He
taught me first how to take Heather.'

'What's that?' said Dan.

'Going out hunting in the Pict country with a tame Pict. You are quite
safe so long as you are his guest, and wear a sprig of heather where it
can be seen. If you went alone you would surely be killed, if you were not
smothered first in the bogs. Only the Picts know their way about those
black and hidden bogs. Old Allo, the one-eyed, withered little Pict from
whom we bought our ponies, was our special friend. At first we went only
to escape from the terrible town, and to talk together about our homes.
Then he showed us how to hunt wolves and those great red deer with horns
like Jewish candlesticks. The Roman-born officers rather looked down on us
for doing this, but we preferred the heather to their amusements. Believe
me,' Parnesius turned again to Dan, 'a boy is safe from all things that
really harm when he is astride a pony or after a deer. Do you remember, O
Faun,' he turned to Puck, 'the little altar I built to the Sylvan Pan by
the pine-forest beyond the brook?'

'Which? The stone one with the line from Xenophon?' said Puck, in quite a
new voice.

'No. What do _I_ know of Xenophon? That was Pertinax--after he had shot his
first mountain-hare with an arrow--by chance! Mine I made of round pebbles
in memory of my first bear. It took me one happy day to build.' Parnesius
faced the children quickly.

'And that was how we lived on the Wall for two years--a little scuffling
with the Picts, and a great deal of hunting with old Allo in the Pict
country. He called us his children sometimes, and we were