THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME

[pg 1]THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME[pg 2][pg 3]ITHE MOUNTAIN OF FIREMarcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the grain was threshed out of it.A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain, and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and some[pg 4]times they took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the top large enough to put one’s hand into easily, and a cover to fit.The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same family,—the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man’s name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming. The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones[pg 5]were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man; Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,—and there had been a Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia’s elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to be slurred over.It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about, driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during the hottest[pg 6]part of the day. When the day’s toil was finished, each man returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system, which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed[pg 7]the gods took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as proper respect was shown.Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep. The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and they called it“corn,”which meant something that is crushed or ground into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the hand. The children had all they[pg 8]wanted, with some goat’s-milk cheese and some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone. There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been forgotten. So ran the story.Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground, as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said then that the smith of the gods was working[pg 9]at his forge. The noises were made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky. She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees and the squirrels did.“Me make basket,”announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her rag doll tumbling to[pg 10]the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall.“Up! up!”“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for you.”The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken up.She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at the sheep.[pg 11]Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.Why were the sheep coming in so early?Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their corner.“You had better pick up all that and go in,”he called to them.“Pater sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and pointed.“Giants,”said she.It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to descend upon the earth.“Mater,”said Bruno,“the spring and the stream have dried up.”The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen[pg 12]were hastening to shelter. The sky was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste, huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic’la’s pet white chicken, which scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.Illustration: Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hurrying to shelterSuddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything turned black. The[pg 13]air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining down from the sky.Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the loudest shout could not have been heard.The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky. Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children were, still held firm.At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was light enough for them to see each other’s faces. They had no way of knowing how long they had crouched there in the[pg 14]dark, but they had been there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.“Are you safe, Livia? And the children?”The man’s deep voice was shaking. But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his baby boy from his wife’s arms, and put the other arm round the two girls, while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced along.“I was trying to catch the white heifer,”he said rather shamefacedly,“but she got away. It’s only a scrape along the skin—let me go, Mater.”And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders and stones. Here and there the woods were on[pg 15]fire. Far up toward the top of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks, was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was strange and unnatural.The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their neighbors had fared.There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run about aimlessly but looked to who[pg 16]ever was there to give orders. The children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the family. Even Felic’la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic’la felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.[pg 17]IITEN FAMILIESWhatever the strange and terrible outbreak of the Mountain of Fire could have meant, the people had no thought of abandoning the land. Within a few days they were repairing or rebuilding their huts and returning to the habits of their daily life. Centuries might pass, more than one such calamity might befall the village, but there would still be men living on the same spot where their forefathers lived, on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire.All the same, a great change had taken place, and they felt it more as time went on. They began to see that the land that had once brought forth food for them all would not now feed them with any such abundance. They would be lucky if they could secure enough food to keep them alive. Some of the fields were burned over by the lava stream; some were ruined by the dammed-up river. Cattle and sheep had been killed or had run away. Much of the grain and[pg 18]wool and other provision for the future had been destroyed. It was a very hard winter.Yet rather than leave their homes and be strangers and outcasts without a country, they endured cold and scarcity and every kind of discomfort, even suffering. Outside the land they knew were unknown terrors,—races who did not speak their language or worship their gods; soil whose ways they did not understand, and very likely far worse troubles than had come upon them here. Most of the people simply made up their minds that what must be, they must endure, because anything else would only be a change for the worse.There were a few, however, who did not take this view. The first to suggest that some might go away was Marcus Colonus. He spoke of it to a little group of his friends while they were in the forest cutting wood. Sylvius, whose wife and children were killed when the stones fell, and Urso the shaggy hunter, who never feared anything, man or beast, and Muraena the metal-worker, a restless fellow who knew that he could get a living wherever men used plows and weapons, all agreed that if Colonus went they would go. If ten heads of households joined the party, it would make a clan. But first the head of the village must be consulted.[pg 19]Old Vitalos was the grandfather of Marcus Colonus and related in one way or another to nearly every person in the village. When his grandson came to him and told what he had in mind, the old chief stroked his long white beard and did not answer at once. He seemed to be thinking, and he thought for a long time.Before written histories, or pictured records, or even songs telling the history of a people, were in use, the memories of the old folk formed the only source of information that there was. As old men will, they told what they knew over and over again, and those who heard, even if they did not know they were remembering it, often remembered a story and told it over again, when their time came. The experiences and the wisdom that old Vitalos had gathered in the eighty years of his useful life were stored in his mind in layers, like silt in the bed of a river. Now he was digging down into his memory for something that had happened a long time ago.When he had done thinking, he spoke.“My son,”he said,“you tell me that you desire to go forth and make your home in another land.”“I desire it not, my father,”said Colonus,“unless it is the will of the gods. I have thought that it may be best.”[pg 20]He did not know it, but while the old man’s mind was busy with the past, his keen old eyes were busy with the strong, well-built figure, the stubborn chin and the fearless eye of this man of his own blood. Colonus walked with the long, sure step of the man who knows where he is going. The fingers of his hand were square-tipped and rugged, the kind that can work. He was Saturn’s own man, made to work the land and produce food for his people. He would not give up easily, nor would he be dismayed by difficulties.“And where will you go?”was the chief’s next question.“That I do not know,”said Colonus.“Yet something I do know. The mountain folk are not friends to us, and we should have to fight them. Their land is all one fortress, not easy to take. To the sea we will not go, for we know nothing of the ways of the sea-tamers. Perhaps our gods would not help us in those things, which are strange to our lives. There remains the plain beyond the marsh, where the river runs out of the valley. I have been there only once, but I remember it. Around it are mountains, and the plain itself is broken by low hills, as we have seen from our heights. In such a land we might live according to customs of our fore[pg 21]fathers. The little hills can be defended, and if enemies come we can see them from far off. Is this a good plan that we make, my father?”The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar, which burned in his house as in every other house of the village; then he looked keenly at his grandson.Illustration: The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar“There are two ways of living in a strange place, Marcus Colonus,”he said.“One is, to live after the manner of those who are born there, obey their gods, learn their law, eat their food, work as they do, join in their feasts and their games. The other is to fight them, and drive[pg 22]them away, or make them your servants. Which is your choice?”Colonus hesitated.“My father,”he said,“to take the first path, I must change my nature and become another man, which I would not do even if I could. Here or in another country, or in the moon if men could go there, I should be Colonus, the farmer,—not a sailor, or a trader, or any other man. To take the second way I must be leader of many fighting men, and this is not possible, since if we go we must take our wives and children. It is in my mind, my father, that there may be a middle way. If we hold to our own customs and are faithful to our own gods and to one another, surely the gods should keep faith with us. If we hurt not the people of the land where we go, but stand ready to defend ourselves against any who try to attack us, they may allow us to live as we please. If not, then must we fight for the right to live.”The old chief smiled.“My son,”he said,“you are wise with the wisdom of youth. Yet sometimes that is better than the unbelief of age. It is better to die fighting strangers than to die by starvation, or to fall upon one another, and I have had fear that one or the other might happen here, for truly the land is changed. It may be that this plan of yours shall end in new branching[pg 23]out of our people, the Ramnes, and in new power to our gods,—and if so, surely the gods will lead you.“Now I have a story to tell you, and you will give careful heed to it, and not speak of it lightly, but store it away in the secret places of your mind. Sit down here, close to me, for I do not wish to be heard by any listener.“Many years ago, before you were born, or ever the road was made over the marsh or the bridge across the river, our people were at war with a strange people from the north. My son, whom you resemble, went to fight against them and did not come back. Whether he died in battle and was left on some unknown field we did not know. We never knew, until in after years, one who was taken prisoner with him came back, his hair white as snow, and told what he had seen.“In that country of which you have spoken, where a plain stretches away toward the sea, and is guarded with mountains and divided by a yellow river, there are people who speak a language like ours and are sons of Mars, as we are. Some live in the hills and some in the plain, and some on the Long White Mountain. Beyond the river the people are strange in every way and their gods are also strange and terrible.“Now among the people of the Long White[pg 24]Mountain was a chief with two sons, and when he died the elder should have been ruler in his place. But the younger one, an evil man, stole into his brother’s place and killed his sons, and forbade his daughter to marry. Here my son was taken as a captive, and he became a servant to that chief.“The daughter of the elder brother was a fair woman, and my son was a strong and comely man, and in secret they married. Then did my son escape, thinking to come back with an army and bring away his wife with their twin boys. But the wicked chief discovered what had been done, and killed the mother and the children, and sent a war party after my son to kill him also. He could have escaped even then, for he crossed a river in flood by swimming. But when they called to him that his wife and her two sons were dead, he returned across the river and fought his pursuers until they killed him. Then he went to find his beloved in that unknown country which is neither land nor water and is full of ghosts.“Now it is in my mind that if that evil chief is dead, the people of his country may welcome you among them. Or if he is not dead, and the elder brother still lives, he may be your friend, since we are of one race and speak one language.[pg 25]In any case it is well for you to know what has happened there in other days, for before we plant a field we desire to know whether wheat, or lentils, or thistles, or salt was last sown there. I was told also that the evil man who killed the mother and the babes declared that the father of the children was the god Mars himself, not wishing that any kinswoman of his should be known to be a wife to a captive and a stranger. Now, my son, go, and peace go with you.”Colonus rose and bowed to the old man, and went home.Now the way was clear to prepare for the emigration, and from time to time others came to talk about it and join the company. Besides the four men who had made the plan in the first place, there were finally seven others,—Tullius, who knew all the ancient laws and customs well, Piscinus the fisherman, Pollio the leather worker, Cossus, an old and wary fighter, the two Nasos, quiet and able farmers (all of whose children had the big nose that marked the family), and Calvo, whose great-grandfather had bequeathed to his descendants a tendency to grow bald young. Calvo already had a little thin spot on the crown of his head, though he was not much over thirty. Among them they had all the most necessary trades and could supply most things they needed.[pg 26]But every one of them was also a good farmer; in fact, in such migrations the settlers were most generally known ascolonior farmers. They had to understand the care of the land in order to get through the first years without starving to death, for there were no cities where they went.Muraena could make unusually fine weapons, and he took care that each of the party should be provided with the best that he could make. The grain was chosen with care, for when they found the place for their settlement they would want it for seed. The finest animals were chosen to stock the farms. The women who were not going made gifts of their best weaving to the housewives who were. The lads who were old enough to fight gave especial attention to their bows and their slings, and spent a good deal of time practicing.All the men who had agreed to go had sons and daughters except Sylvius, and most of the children were old enough to do something to help. They were very much excited, and secretly most of them were rather scared.There was no priest in the company; that is to say, there was no man who had nothing else to do, for that was not the custom among the Ramnes. They chose a man they all trusted for this office. Tullius was chosen priest by the[pg 27]coloni. It was due to his advice that the water jars and the leather bottles for water-carrying were well selected, strong and numerous. It was a hobby of his, the drinking of pure water, and he believed it had more to do with health than any other one thing. He also believed that the gods do not protect the careless and the lazy. For instance, if a man were to pray to Mars to keep his house from being destroyed by fire, and then burn brush on a windy day in summer, when the wind was blowing that way, and a spark happened to light on the thatch, Mars would not be likely to put it out. He would let it burn. If the gods went to the trouble of saving people from the consequences of not using common sense, they would show themselves to be fools, and not in the least god-like. Tullius prayed at all proper times, but when he was working he worked with his head as well as with his hands. He said that that was what heads were for.[pg 28]IIITHE SACRED YEARIn the month of spring when day and night are equal, and the young lambs frisk on new grass, a company of young men and girls went slowly out from a little town on the eastern side of a great mountain range. The long narrow country stretching out into the sea, which is now called Italy, is divided by this range lengthwise into two parts, and in the earliest days of the country the people on one side had hardly anything to do with those on the other. On the coast toward the sunrise were many harbors, and seafaring men from other countries came there sometimes to trade. On the other side, the young people who were now setting their faces westward did not at all know what they would find.They were all of about the same age, and they looked grave and a little anxious; some of the girls had been crying. The day had come when they were to leave the place where they had been born and brought up and go into an unknown[pg 29]world, and it was not likely that they would ever come back.They belonged to the Sabine people, who used to live on the banks of the rivers not far from the coast, and kept cattle and sheep and goats, and raised grain and different kinds of vegetables, and had vineyards. The land was so rich that they had more food and other things than they needed, and used to trade more or less with the strangers from other countries. So many strangers came there and settled in course of time that the first inhabitants were crowded back toward the mountains, away from the sea. Then war parties of Umbrians from the north came pushing their way into the country, and the peaceable farming folk were obliged to retreat still farther up the rivers into the mountain, and clear new land and settle it. This happened all a long time ago. It was not easy to live there, and they were poorer than they used to be, for so much of the land was rock and forest that they had to spend a great deal of their time getting it into a fit condition for either grain or cattle or anything else. But they learned to do most things for themselves, as mountain people do; they were not afraid of hard work or danger, and although they lived plainly they were comfortable.[pg 30]But even here they were not let alone. About twenty years earlier, before any of these boys and girls were born, the Umbrian war parties came up into the higher valleys, and the Sabines had to fight for their very lives. They won the war and drove back the invaders in the end, but it began to seem that some day they would be wiped out altogether and forgotten.After this war there were some hard years. Many of the men had been killed, and the fields had been neglected when the fighting was going on. Where the enemy came they trampled down and ruined the vineyards, and burned houses and barns, and drove off the flocks and herds for their own use. That one year of war almost ruined the work that had been done in half a lifetime. If they were to be obliged to spend half their time defending what land they had, every year would be worse than the last.Finally Flamen the priest, the man most respected in the central and largest of the towns, spoke of an old custom called the“sacred spring.”It was a method of making sacrifice to the gods when things came to a very evil pass indeed. In a way it was a sacrifice, and in a way it was a chance of saving something from the general ruin. Flamen believed that if they kept a“sacred spring”their guardian god,[pg 31]Mars, would help them. All this happened a long time before the calamity that drove the emigrants to set out from the Mountain of Fire. There are all sorts of reasons why people change their place of living and begin new settlements in a strange country, but in those days it was a much more serious matter than it is now, and it took almost a life-and-death reason to make them do it.When villages agreed to keep a sacred year, as these finally did, they gave to the gods everything that was born in that year. The cattle, sheep, goats and poultry were killed in sacrifice, when they were grown. But the children born that spring were not killed. They were taught that when they were old enough they were to go out and build homes for themselves in another land, trusting in the great and wise god Mars to show them where to go. If this was done, even though the Umbrians attacked the country again and again, and killed off the people or made them slaves, there would still be Sabine men and women living in the old ways, somewhere in the world. And now the time had come for them to set out to find their new home.Flamen the priest gave a daughter in the year of the sacred spring; Maurs the smith gave a son. Almost every family in all the country[pg 32]round had a son or daughter or at least a near relative who was going. Some of the young people were married before the day came for them to go; in fact, there were a great many brides and grooms in the party. The parents had given their children plenty of seed grain and roots and plants, cuttings of shrubs and trees and vines, animals and fowls to stock their farms, provision for the journey, and whatever clothing and other goods they could carry without the risk of being delayed or tempting plunderers to kill them for their riches. Everything that could be done was done to make their great undertaking successful.At daybreak on the day that had been decided upon, the farewell ceremonies began. Hymns were sung and a feast was held, prayers and sacrifices were made; there were all sorts of farewell wishes and loving hopes and instructions. Nothing, however, could make it anything but a very solemn occasion. The young people must go beyond the mountains, for on this side they could have no hope of finding any place to live. No one knew what awaited them. But whatever happened, no one would have dreamed of breaking the promise made to the gods. A pledge is a pledge, and not the shrewdest cheat can deceive the gods, for they know men’s hearts.[pg 33]Illustration: All the young voices took up the songFlam’na, the wife of young Mauros the maker of swords, looked back just once as they lost sight of the village. Then she led in the singing of the last of the farewell songs. She had a beautiful voice, clear and strong and sweet; her husband’s deeper tones joined hers, and then all the young voices took up the song as streams run into a river. The fathers and mothers heard the wild music of their singing floating down from the mountain forest as they climbed the narrow trail. They were following a path which the young men knew from their hunting expeditions, which led around the shoulder of the mountain to a pass[pg 34]through which they could cross and go down the other side. Now that they were fairly on their way, the care of the young animals they were driving, all of them full of life and not at all used to keeping together in strange woods, took up most of the attention of the whole party.On the western slopes, as far as the hunters had ever gone, there were no people living in villages—only scattered woodcutters and hunters, and here and there a poor ignorant family in a little clearing. If they went far enough down to reach the upper valleys of streams or rivers, they might find just the sort of place they wanted for their new home. Others must have done this in the past, or there would never have been the custom of the sacred spring, for the emigrant parties would have been all killed off or starved to death. The young men said that what others had done they could do, and they went valiantly on, chanting a marching song.In these spring days, as time passed, the mornings were earlier and the twilights later. They lived well while their provisions lasted, and there was game in the forest and fish in the little streams. They always carried coals from their camp fires to light the next fires, and in the cool evenings the leaping flames were pleasant.[pg 35]They also kept wild beasts from coming too near.There were three groups of the young people, from three different villages. At night they gathered in three camps; each“company”which ate bread together was made up of relatives and friends. After they had crossed the mountain pass and before they had gone very far on the other side, they halted for a day to talk matters over and decide what to do next. It was very important now to take the right course.The youths gathered under a huge oak to hold a council while their wives and sisters and cousins busied themselves with affairs of their own. The men would have to do the fighting, and the girls were quite willing to leave the general plans to them. They were a sober and serious group of young fellows as they sat there in the dappling sunshine. It was enough to make any man serious. Mars had brought them so far without any serious mishap, and he might go on protecting them all the rest of the way; but the question was, how to discover what was best to do. All the ways down the mountain looked very much alike, and yet one might lead into a country inhabited by fierce and cruel enemies, and another into a barren rocky waste, and another to a fertile valley.Mauros was their leader, so far as they had[pg 36]one, but he called on each man in turn to say what he thought. There seemed to be a good deal of doubt about the wisdom of so large a party traveling together. The chances were against their finding a valley large enough for all to live in. They were not likely to find so much cleared land or good pasture in any one place. If they were to separate, and each party took a different direction, one or another certainly ought to be able to find the right sort of place. Perhaps all of them would. Even one of the camps was strong enough to defend itself against any ordinary enemy. They were all young and strong, active and full of courage, and as time went on they would be traveling lighter and lighter, for the provisions would be eaten up and the spare animals killed for food. They decided to do this, to offer a sacrifice to Mars and pray to him to direct them. The next morning all were ready to go on and waited only for a sign.Each of the gods had certain favorite animals, birds and plants. Mars had plenty of servants he could send to do his will, and surely he would show them what to do.Flam’na stood with her cousins, watching Mauros as he stood in the center of the silent group under the great oak tree. The fires were[pg 37]flickering slowly down to red coals, and a little wind blew from the west. Suddenly their lead-ox, the wisest of the team, lifted his head and sniffed the breeze, pawed the earth, bellowed, and plunged down a grassy glade, followed more slowly by the other oxen and the whole party in that camp. The ox was one of the beasts of Mars. Nothing could be clearer than this. Mauros turned and waved a laughing farewell to the other camps, and raced on to make sure that the ox did not get out of sight. Before they had gone very far they came to a tiny brook, which went chuckling on as if it knew something interesting. They followed it downward and began to find more and more grass as the valley widened and the trees grew less thick. Finally they found a place where the water was good and the soil rich, and there was room for all their beasts to graze. They called the town they built there Bovianum, after the ox of Mars. They were sometimes called by their neighbors the Bovii, the cattlemen, for herds of cattle were not very common in that part of the country.In the camp to the right of this, not long after the departure of the ox, one of the girls saw something red moving high up on the trunk of a tree, and pointed it out to her brother. His eyes followed hers, and soon all the company[pg 38]gathered in the edge of the woodlands, watching that scarlet dot among the thick leaves. Then, with a sudden rush of little wings, a green woodpecker flew down from the tree top and perched on a bough just over their heads. He looked down knowingly into the upturned, eager faces, and with a cheery call flew away down a ravine, and alighted again. Breathless, wide-eyed and silent, they ventured nearer. He beat his tiny tattoo on the bark as if he were sounding a drum, and flew on. Now scarlet was the color of Mars, the drum was his favorite instrument of music, and Picus the woodpecker was his own bird. Following their little feathered guide, they went farther and farther north until they found a home among the spurs of the Apennines. They called themselves the Picentes, the Woodpecker People, and their children all knew the story of the sacred spring and the bird of Mars.The third company had no time to watch the others, for some wolves had winded their sheep, and the young men had to run to fight them off. Some of them chased the skulking gray thieves for some distance and came back with the news that the wolves had led them southward to a rocky height, where they could look over the tops of the trees below and see an uncommonly fine place for the colony. This was as plain a sign[pg 39]as one could ask for, and the whole party, in great satisfaction and relief, went on to the home that the wolves had found for them. The wolf was another of the beasts of Mars. This settlement took the name of the Herpini, the Wolf People.All three of the Sabine colonies prospered and grew strong, and although they had little to do with each other they lived in peace with relatives and neighbors. There came to be many villages on the slopes of the Apennines in which the Sabine language was spoken. This was the last time that they were forced to keep a Sacred Year, for the Umbrian war parties left them alone, and perhaps did not even know where they were; and the mountain land was pleasant and fertile, out of the way of floods. There was no reason in the world why the brave young couples who founded their homes here, and worked and played and kept holiday, and loved the green earth as all their forefathers had loved it, should not be prosperous and happy, and they were, for many a long year.

[pg 1]THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME[pg 2][pg 3]ITHE MOUNTAIN OF FIREMarcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the grain was threshed out of it.A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain, and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and some[pg 4]times they took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the top large enough to put one’s hand into easily, and a cover to fit.The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same family,—the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man’s name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming. The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones[pg 5]were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man; Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,—and there had been a Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia’s elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to be slurred over.It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about, driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during the hottest[pg 6]part of the day. When the day’s toil was finished, each man returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system, which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed[pg 7]the gods took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as proper respect was shown.Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep. The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and they called it“corn,”which meant something that is crushed or ground into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the hand. The children had all they[pg 8]wanted, with some goat’s-milk cheese and some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone. There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been forgotten. So ran the story.Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground, as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said then that the smith of the gods was working[pg 9]at his forge. The noises were made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky. She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees and the squirrels did.“Me make basket,”announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her rag doll tumbling to[pg 10]the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall.“Up! up!”“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for you.”The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken up.She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at the sheep.[pg 11]Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.Why were the sheep coming in so early?Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their corner.“You had better pick up all that and go in,”he called to them.“Pater sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and pointed.“Giants,”said she.It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to descend upon the earth.“Mater,”said Bruno,“the spring and the stream have dried up.”The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen[pg 12]were hastening to shelter. The sky was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste, huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic’la’s pet white chicken, which scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.Illustration: Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hurrying to shelterSuddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything turned black. The[pg 13]air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining down from the sky.Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the loudest shout could not have been heard.The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky. Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children were, still held firm.At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was light enough for them to see each other’s faces. They had no way of knowing how long they had crouched there in the[pg 14]dark, but they had been there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.“Are you safe, Livia? And the children?”The man’s deep voice was shaking. But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his baby boy from his wife’s arms, and put the other arm round the two girls, while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced along.“I was trying to catch the white heifer,”he said rather shamefacedly,“but she got away. It’s only a scrape along the skin—let me go, Mater.”And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders and stones. Here and there the woods were on[pg 15]fire. Far up toward the top of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks, was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was strange and unnatural.The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their neighbors had fared.There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run about aimlessly but looked to who[pg 16]ever was there to give orders. The children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the family. Even Felic’la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic’la felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.[pg 17]IITEN FAMILIESWhatever the strange and terrible outbreak of the Mountain of Fire could have meant, the people had no thought of abandoning the land. Within a few days they were repairing or rebuilding their huts and returning to the habits of their daily life. Centuries might pass, more than one such calamity might befall the village, but there would still be men living on the same spot where their forefathers lived, on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire.All the same, a great change had taken place, and they felt it more as time went on. They began to see that the land that had once brought forth food for them all would not now feed them with any such abundance. They would be lucky if they could secure enough food to keep them alive. Some of the fields were burned over by the lava stream; some were ruined by the dammed-up river. Cattle and sheep had been killed or had run away. Much of the grain and[pg 18]wool and other provision for the future had been destroyed. It was a very hard winter.Yet rather than leave their homes and be strangers and outcasts without a country, they endured cold and scarcity and every kind of discomfort, even suffering. Outside the land they knew were unknown terrors,—races who did not speak their language or worship their gods; soil whose ways they did not understand, and very likely far worse troubles than had come upon them here. Most of the people simply made up their minds that what must be, they must endure, because anything else would only be a change for the worse.There were a few, however, who did not take this view. The first to suggest that some might go away was Marcus Colonus. He spoke of it to a little group of his friends while they were in the forest cutting wood. Sylvius, whose wife and children were killed when the stones fell, and Urso the shaggy hunter, who never feared anything, man or beast, and Muraena the metal-worker, a restless fellow who knew that he could get a living wherever men used plows and weapons, all agreed that if Colonus went they would go. If ten heads of households joined the party, it would make a clan. But first the head of the village must be consulted.[pg 19]Old Vitalos was the grandfather of Marcus Colonus and related in one way or another to nearly every person in the village. When his grandson came to him and told what he had in mind, the old chief stroked his long white beard and did not answer at once. He seemed to be thinking, and he thought for a long time.Before written histories, or pictured records, or even songs telling the history of a people, were in use, the memories of the old folk formed the only source of information that there was. As old men will, they told what they knew over and over again, and those who heard, even if they did not know they were remembering it, often remembered a story and told it over again, when their time came. The experiences and the wisdom that old Vitalos had gathered in the eighty years of his useful life were stored in his mind in layers, like silt in the bed of a river. Now he was digging down into his memory for something that had happened a long time ago.When he had done thinking, he spoke.“My son,”he said,“you tell me that you desire to go forth and make your home in another land.”“I desire it not, my father,”said Colonus,“unless it is the will of the gods. I have thought that it may be best.”[pg 20]He did not know it, but while the old man’s mind was busy with the past, his keen old eyes were busy with the strong, well-built figure, the stubborn chin and the fearless eye of this man of his own blood. Colonus walked with the long, sure step of the man who knows where he is going. The fingers of his hand were square-tipped and rugged, the kind that can work. He was Saturn’s own man, made to work the land and produce food for his people. He would not give up easily, nor would he be dismayed by difficulties.“And where will you go?”was the chief’s next question.“That I do not know,”said Colonus.“Yet something I do know. The mountain folk are not friends to us, and we should have to fight them. Their land is all one fortress, not easy to take. To the sea we will not go, for we know nothing of the ways of the sea-tamers. Perhaps our gods would not help us in those things, which are strange to our lives. There remains the plain beyond the marsh, where the river runs out of the valley. I have been there only once, but I remember it. Around it are mountains, and the plain itself is broken by low hills, as we have seen from our heights. In such a land we might live according to customs of our fore[pg 21]fathers. The little hills can be defended, and if enemies come we can see them from far off. Is this a good plan that we make, my father?”The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar, which burned in his house as in every other house of the village; then he looked keenly at his grandson.Illustration: The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar“There are two ways of living in a strange place, Marcus Colonus,”he said.“One is, to live after the manner of those who are born there, obey their gods, learn their law, eat their food, work as they do, join in their feasts and their games. The other is to fight them, and drive[pg 22]them away, or make them your servants. Which is your choice?”Colonus hesitated.“My father,”he said,“to take the first path, I must change my nature and become another man, which I would not do even if I could. Here or in another country, or in the moon if men could go there, I should be Colonus, the farmer,—not a sailor, or a trader, or any other man. To take the second way I must be leader of many fighting men, and this is not possible, since if we go we must take our wives and children. It is in my mind, my father, that there may be a middle way. If we hold to our own customs and are faithful to our own gods and to one another, surely the gods should keep faith with us. If we hurt not the people of the land where we go, but stand ready to defend ourselves against any who try to attack us, they may allow us to live as we please. If not, then must we fight for the right to live.”The old chief smiled.“My son,”he said,“you are wise with the wisdom of youth. Yet sometimes that is better than the unbelief of age. It is better to die fighting strangers than to die by starvation, or to fall upon one another, and I have had fear that one or the other might happen here, for truly the land is changed. It may be that this plan of yours shall end in new branching[pg 23]out of our people, the Ramnes, and in new power to our gods,—and if so, surely the gods will lead you.“Now I have a story to tell you, and you will give careful heed to it, and not speak of it lightly, but store it away in the secret places of your mind. Sit down here, close to me, for I do not wish to be heard by any listener.“Many years ago, before you were born, or ever the road was made over the marsh or the bridge across the river, our people were at war with a strange people from the north. My son, whom you resemble, went to fight against them and did not come back. Whether he died in battle and was left on some unknown field we did not know. We never knew, until in after years, one who was taken prisoner with him came back, his hair white as snow, and told what he had seen.“In that country of which you have spoken, where a plain stretches away toward the sea, and is guarded with mountains and divided by a yellow river, there are people who speak a language like ours and are sons of Mars, as we are. Some live in the hills and some in the plain, and some on the Long White Mountain. Beyond the river the people are strange in every way and their gods are also strange and terrible.“Now among the people of the Long White[pg 24]Mountain was a chief with two sons, and when he died the elder should have been ruler in his place. But the younger one, an evil man, stole into his brother’s place and killed his sons, and forbade his daughter to marry. Here my son was taken as a captive, and he became a servant to that chief.“The daughter of the elder brother was a fair woman, and my son was a strong and comely man, and in secret they married. Then did my son escape, thinking to come back with an army and bring away his wife with their twin boys. But the wicked chief discovered what had been done, and killed the mother and the children, and sent a war party after my son to kill him also. He could have escaped even then, for he crossed a river in flood by swimming. But when they called to him that his wife and her two sons were dead, he returned across the river and fought his pursuers until they killed him. Then he went to find his beloved in that unknown country which is neither land nor water and is full of ghosts.“Now it is in my mind that if that evil chief is dead, the people of his country may welcome you among them. Or if he is not dead, and the elder brother still lives, he may be your friend, since we are of one race and speak one language.[pg 25]In any case it is well for you to know what has happened there in other days, for before we plant a field we desire to know whether wheat, or lentils, or thistles, or salt was last sown there. I was told also that the evil man who killed the mother and the babes declared that the father of the children was the god Mars himself, not wishing that any kinswoman of his should be known to be a wife to a captive and a stranger. Now, my son, go, and peace go with you.”Colonus rose and bowed to the old man, and went home.Now the way was clear to prepare for the emigration, and from time to time others came to talk about it and join the company. Besides the four men who had made the plan in the first place, there were finally seven others,—Tullius, who knew all the ancient laws and customs well, Piscinus the fisherman, Pollio the leather worker, Cossus, an old and wary fighter, the two Nasos, quiet and able farmers (all of whose children had the big nose that marked the family), and Calvo, whose great-grandfather had bequeathed to his descendants a tendency to grow bald young. Calvo already had a little thin spot on the crown of his head, though he was not much over thirty. Among them they had all the most necessary trades and could supply most things they needed.[pg 26]But every one of them was also a good farmer; in fact, in such migrations the settlers were most generally known ascolonior farmers. They had to understand the care of the land in order to get through the first years without starving to death, for there were no cities where they went.Muraena could make unusually fine weapons, and he took care that each of the party should be provided with the best that he could make. The grain was chosen with care, for when they found the place for their settlement they would want it for seed. The finest animals were chosen to stock the farms. The women who were not going made gifts of their best weaving to the housewives who were. The lads who were old enough to fight gave especial attention to their bows and their slings, and spent a good deal of time practicing.All the men who had agreed to go had sons and daughters except Sylvius, and most of the children were old enough to do something to help. They were very much excited, and secretly most of them were rather scared.There was no priest in the company; that is to say, there was no man who had nothing else to do, for that was not the custom among the Ramnes. They chose a man they all trusted for this office. Tullius was chosen priest by the[pg 27]coloni. It was due to his advice that the water jars and the leather bottles for water-carrying were well selected, strong and numerous. It was a hobby of his, the drinking of pure water, and he believed it had more to do with health than any other one thing. He also believed that the gods do not protect the careless and the lazy. For instance, if a man were to pray to Mars to keep his house from being destroyed by fire, and then burn brush on a windy day in summer, when the wind was blowing that way, and a spark happened to light on the thatch, Mars would not be likely to put it out. He would let it burn. If the gods went to the trouble of saving people from the consequences of not using common sense, they would show themselves to be fools, and not in the least god-like. Tullius prayed at all proper times, but when he was working he worked with his head as well as with his hands. He said that that was what heads were for.[pg 28]IIITHE SACRED YEARIn the month of spring when day and night are equal, and the young lambs frisk on new grass, a company of young men and girls went slowly out from a little town on the eastern side of a great mountain range. The long narrow country stretching out into the sea, which is now called Italy, is divided by this range lengthwise into two parts, and in the earliest days of the country the people on one side had hardly anything to do with those on the other. On the coast toward the sunrise were many harbors, and seafaring men from other countries came there sometimes to trade. On the other side, the young people who were now setting their faces westward did not at all know what they would find.They were all of about the same age, and they looked grave and a little anxious; some of the girls had been crying. The day had come when they were to leave the place where they had been born and brought up and go into an unknown[pg 29]world, and it was not likely that they would ever come back.They belonged to the Sabine people, who used to live on the banks of the rivers not far from the coast, and kept cattle and sheep and goats, and raised grain and different kinds of vegetables, and had vineyards. The land was so rich that they had more food and other things than they needed, and used to trade more or less with the strangers from other countries. So many strangers came there and settled in course of time that the first inhabitants were crowded back toward the mountains, away from the sea. Then war parties of Umbrians from the north came pushing their way into the country, and the peaceable farming folk were obliged to retreat still farther up the rivers into the mountain, and clear new land and settle it. This happened all a long time ago. It was not easy to live there, and they were poorer than they used to be, for so much of the land was rock and forest that they had to spend a great deal of their time getting it into a fit condition for either grain or cattle or anything else. But they learned to do most things for themselves, as mountain people do; they were not afraid of hard work or danger, and although they lived plainly they were comfortable.[pg 30]But even here they were not let alone. About twenty years earlier, before any of these boys and girls were born, the Umbrian war parties came up into the higher valleys, and the Sabines had to fight for their very lives. They won the war and drove back the invaders in the end, but it began to seem that some day they would be wiped out altogether and forgotten.After this war there were some hard years. Many of the men had been killed, and the fields had been neglected when the fighting was going on. Where the enemy came they trampled down and ruined the vineyards, and burned houses and barns, and drove off the flocks and herds for their own use. That one year of war almost ruined the work that had been done in half a lifetime. If they were to be obliged to spend half their time defending what land they had, every year would be worse than the last.Finally Flamen the priest, the man most respected in the central and largest of the towns, spoke of an old custom called the“sacred spring.”It was a method of making sacrifice to the gods when things came to a very evil pass indeed. In a way it was a sacrifice, and in a way it was a chance of saving something from the general ruin. Flamen believed that if they kept a“sacred spring”their guardian god,[pg 31]Mars, would help them. All this happened a long time before the calamity that drove the emigrants to set out from the Mountain of Fire. There are all sorts of reasons why people change their place of living and begin new settlements in a strange country, but in those days it was a much more serious matter than it is now, and it took almost a life-and-death reason to make them do it.When villages agreed to keep a sacred year, as these finally did, they gave to the gods everything that was born in that year. The cattle, sheep, goats and poultry were killed in sacrifice, when they were grown. But the children born that spring were not killed. They were taught that when they were old enough they were to go out and build homes for themselves in another land, trusting in the great and wise god Mars to show them where to go. If this was done, even though the Umbrians attacked the country again and again, and killed off the people or made them slaves, there would still be Sabine men and women living in the old ways, somewhere in the world. And now the time had come for them to set out to find their new home.Flamen the priest gave a daughter in the year of the sacred spring; Maurs the smith gave a son. Almost every family in all the country[pg 32]round had a son or daughter or at least a near relative who was going. Some of the young people were married before the day came for them to go; in fact, there were a great many brides and grooms in the party. The parents had given their children plenty of seed grain and roots and plants, cuttings of shrubs and trees and vines, animals and fowls to stock their farms, provision for the journey, and whatever clothing and other goods they could carry without the risk of being delayed or tempting plunderers to kill them for their riches. Everything that could be done was done to make their great undertaking successful.At daybreak on the day that had been decided upon, the farewell ceremonies began. Hymns were sung and a feast was held, prayers and sacrifices were made; there were all sorts of farewell wishes and loving hopes and instructions. Nothing, however, could make it anything but a very solemn occasion. The young people must go beyond the mountains, for on this side they could have no hope of finding any place to live. No one knew what awaited them. But whatever happened, no one would have dreamed of breaking the promise made to the gods. A pledge is a pledge, and not the shrewdest cheat can deceive the gods, for they know men’s hearts.[pg 33]Illustration: All the young voices took up the songFlam’na, the wife of young Mauros the maker of swords, looked back just once as they lost sight of the village. Then she led in the singing of the last of the farewell songs. She had a beautiful voice, clear and strong and sweet; her husband’s deeper tones joined hers, and then all the young voices took up the song as streams run into a river. The fathers and mothers heard the wild music of their singing floating down from the mountain forest as they climbed the narrow trail. They were following a path which the young men knew from their hunting expeditions, which led around the shoulder of the mountain to a pass[pg 34]through which they could cross and go down the other side. Now that they were fairly on their way, the care of the young animals they were driving, all of them full of life and not at all used to keeping together in strange woods, took up most of the attention of the whole party.On the western slopes, as far as the hunters had ever gone, there were no people living in villages—only scattered woodcutters and hunters, and here and there a poor ignorant family in a little clearing. If they went far enough down to reach the upper valleys of streams or rivers, they might find just the sort of place they wanted for their new home. Others must have done this in the past, or there would never have been the custom of the sacred spring, for the emigrant parties would have been all killed off or starved to death. The young men said that what others had done they could do, and they went valiantly on, chanting a marching song.In these spring days, as time passed, the mornings were earlier and the twilights later. They lived well while their provisions lasted, and there was game in the forest and fish in the little streams. They always carried coals from their camp fires to light the next fires, and in the cool evenings the leaping flames were pleasant.[pg 35]They also kept wild beasts from coming too near.There were three groups of the young people, from three different villages. At night they gathered in three camps; each“company”which ate bread together was made up of relatives and friends. After they had crossed the mountain pass and before they had gone very far on the other side, they halted for a day to talk matters over and decide what to do next. It was very important now to take the right course.The youths gathered under a huge oak to hold a council while their wives and sisters and cousins busied themselves with affairs of their own. The men would have to do the fighting, and the girls were quite willing to leave the general plans to them. They were a sober and serious group of young fellows as they sat there in the dappling sunshine. It was enough to make any man serious. Mars had brought them so far without any serious mishap, and he might go on protecting them all the rest of the way; but the question was, how to discover what was best to do. All the ways down the mountain looked very much alike, and yet one might lead into a country inhabited by fierce and cruel enemies, and another into a barren rocky waste, and another to a fertile valley.Mauros was their leader, so far as they had[pg 36]one, but he called on each man in turn to say what he thought. There seemed to be a good deal of doubt about the wisdom of so large a party traveling together. The chances were against their finding a valley large enough for all to live in. They were not likely to find so much cleared land or good pasture in any one place. If they were to separate, and each party took a different direction, one or another certainly ought to be able to find the right sort of place. Perhaps all of them would. Even one of the camps was strong enough to defend itself against any ordinary enemy. They were all young and strong, active and full of courage, and as time went on they would be traveling lighter and lighter, for the provisions would be eaten up and the spare animals killed for food. They decided to do this, to offer a sacrifice to Mars and pray to him to direct them. The next morning all were ready to go on and waited only for a sign.Each of the gods had certain favorite animals, birds and plants. Mars had plenty of servants he could send to do his will, and surely he would show them what to do.Flam’na stood with her cousins, watching Mauros as he stood in the center of the silent group under the great oak tree. The fires were[pg 37]flickering slowly down to red coals, and a little wind blew from the west. Suddenly their lead-ox, the wisest of the team, lifted his head and sniffed the breeze, pawed the earth, bellowed, and plunged down a grassy glade, followed more slowly by the other oxen and the whole party in that camp. The ox was one of the beasts of Mars. Nothing could be clearer than this. Mauros turned and waved a laughing farewell to the other camps, and raced on to make sure that the ox did not get out of sight. Before they had gone very far they came to a tiny brook, which went chuckling on as if it knew something interesting. They followed it downward and began to find more and more grass as the valley widened and the trees grew less thick. Finally they found a place where the water was good and the soil rich, and there was room for all their beasts to graze. They called the town they built there Bovianum, after the ox of Mars. They were sometimes called by their neighbors the Bovii, the cattlemen, for herds of cattle were not very common in that part of the country.In the camp to the right of this, not long after the departure of the ox, one of the girls saw something red moving high up on the trunk of a tree, and pointed it out to her brother. His eyes followed hers, and soon all the company[pg 38]gathered in the edge of the woodlands, watching that scarlet dot among the thick leaves. Then, with a sudden rush of little wings, a green woodpecker flew down from the tree top and perched on a bough just over their heads. He looked down knowingly into the upturned, eager faces, and with a cheery call flew away down a ravine, and alighted again. Breathless, wide-eyed and silent, they ventured nearer. He beat his tiny tattoo on the bark as if he were sounding a drum, and flew on. Now scarlet was the color of Mars, the drum was his favorite instrument of music, and Picus the woodpecker was his own bird. Following their little feathered guide, they went farther and farther north until they found a home among the spurs of the Apennines. They called themselves the Picentes, the Woodpecker People, and their children all knew the story of the sacred spring and the bird of Mars.The third company had no time to watch the others, for some wolves had winded their sheep, and the young men had to run to fight them off. Some of them chased the skulking gray thieves for some distance and came back with the news that the wolves had led them southward to a rocky height, where they could look over the tops of the trees below and see an uncommonly fine place for the colony. This was as plain a sign[pg 39]as one could ask for, and the whole party, in great satisfaction and relief, went on to the home that the wolves had found for them. The wolf was another of the beasts of Mars. This settlement took the name of the Herpini, the Wolf People.All three of the Sabine colonies prospered and grew strong, and although they had little to do with each other they lived in peace with relatives and neighbors. There came to be many villages on the slopes of the Apennines in which the Sabine language was spoken. This was the last time that they were forced to keep a Sacred Year, for the Umbrian war parties left them alone, and perhaps did not even know where they were; and the mountain land was pleasant and fertile, out of the way of floods. There was no reason in the world why the brave young couples who founded their homes here, and worked and played and kept holiday, and loved the green earth as all their forefathers had loved it, should not be prosperous and happy, and they were, for many a long year.

[pg 3]ITHE MOUNTAIN OF FIREMarcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the grain was threshed out of it.A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain, and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and some[pg 4]times they took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the top large enough to put one’s hand into easily, and a cover to fit.The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same family,—the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man’s name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming. The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones[pg 5]were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man; Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,—and there had been a Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia’s elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to be slurred over.It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about, driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during the hottest[pg 6]part of the day. When the day’s toil was finished, each man returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system, which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed[pg 7]the gods took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as proper respect was shown.Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep. The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and they called it“corn,”which meant something that is crushed or ground into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the hand. The children had all they[pg 8]wanted, with some goat’s-milk cheese and some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone. There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been forgotten. So ran the story.Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground, as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said then that the smith of the gods was working[pg 9]at his forge. The noises were made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky. She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees and the squirrels did.“Me make basket,”announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her rag doll tumbling to[pg 10]the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall.“Up! up!”“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for you.”The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken up.She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at the sheep.[pg 11]Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.Why were the sheep coming in so early?Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their corner.“You had better pick up all that and go in,”he called to them.“Pater sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and pointed.“Giants,”said she.It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to descend upon the earth.“Mater,”said Bruno,“the spring and the stream have dried up.”The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen[pg 12]were hastening to shelter. The sky was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste, huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic’la’s pet white chicken, which scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.Illustration: Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hurrying to shelterSuddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything turned black. The[pg 13]air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining down from the sky.Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the loudest shout could not have been heard.The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky. Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children were, still held firm.At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was light enough for them to see each other’s faces. They had no way of knowing how long they had crouched there in the[pg 14]dark, but they had been there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.“Are you safe, Livia? And the children?”The man’s deep voice was shaking. But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his baby boy from his wife’s arms, and put the other arm round the two girls, while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced along.“I was trying to catch the white heifer,”he said rather shamefacedly,“but she got away. It’s only a scrape along the skin—let me go, Mater.”And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders and stones. Here and there the woods were on[pg 15]fire. Far up toward the top of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks, was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was strange and unnatural.The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their neighbors had fared.There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run about aimlessly but looked to who[pg 16]ever was there to give orders. The children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the family. Even Felic’la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic’la felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.

Marcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the grain was threshed out of it.

A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain, and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and some[pg 4]times they took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the top large enough to put one’s hand into easily, and a cover to fit.

The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same family,—the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.

His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man’s name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming. The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones[pg 5]were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man; Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,—and there had been a Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia’s elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to be slurred over.

It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about, driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during the hottest[pg 6]part of the day. When the day’s toil was finished, each man returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.

The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system, which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed[pg 7]the gods took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as proper respect was shown.

Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.

The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep. The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and they called it“corn,”which meant something that is crushed or ground into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the hand. The children had all they[pg 8]wanted, with some goat’s-milk cheese and some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.

Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone. There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been forgotten. So ran the story.

Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground, as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said then that the smith of the gods was working[pg 9]at his forge. The noises were made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.

Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky. She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees and the squirrels did.

“Me make basket,”announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her rag doll tumbling to[pg 10]the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall.“Up! up!”

“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for you.”

The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken up.

She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at the sheep.[pg 11]Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.

Why were the sheep coming in so early?

Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their corner.

“You had better pick up all that and go in,”he called to them.“Pater sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”

They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and pointed.

“Giants,”said she.

It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to descend upon the earth.

“Mater,”said Bruno,“the spring and the stream have dried up.”

The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen[pg 12]were hastening to shelter. The sky was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste, huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic’la’s pet white chicken, which scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.

Illustration: Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hurrying to shelter

Suddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything turned black. The[pg 13]air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining down from the sky.

Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the loudest shout could not have been heard.

The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky. Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children were, still held firm.

At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was light enough for them to see each other’s faces. They had no way of knowing how long they had crouched there in the[pg 14]dark, but they had been there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.

“Are you safe, Livia? And the children?”The man’s deep voice was shaking. But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his baby boy from his wife’s arms, and put the other arm round the two girls, while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced along.

“I was trying to catch the white heifer,”he said rather shamefacedly,“but she got away. It’s only a scrape along the skin—let me go, Mater.”And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.

Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders and stones. Here and there the woods were on[pg 15]fire. Far up toward the top of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks, was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was strange and unnatural.

The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their neighbors had fared.

There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run about aimlessly but looked to who[pg 16]ever was there to give orders. The children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the family. Even Felic’la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic’la felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.

[pg 17]IITEN FAMILIESWhatever the strange and terrible outbreak of the Mountain of Fire could have meant, the people had no thought of abandoning the land. Within a few days they were repairing or rebuilding their huts and returning to the habits of their daily life. Centuries might pass, more than one such calamity might befall the village, but there would still be men living on the same spot where their forefathers lived, on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire.All the same, a great change had taken place, and they felt it more as time went on. They began to see that the land that had once brought forth food for them all would not now feed them with any such abundance. They would be lucky if they could secure enough food to keep them alive. Some of the fields were burned over by the lava stream; some were ruined by the dammed-up river. Cattle and sheep had been killed or had run away. Much of the grain and[pg 18]wool and other provision for the future had been destroyed. It was a very hard winter.Yet rather than leave their homes and be strangers and outcasts without a country, they endured cold and scarcity and every kind of discomfort, even suffering. Outside the land they knew were unknown terrors,—races who did not speak their language or worship their gods; soil whose ways they did not understand, and very likely far worse troubles than had come upon them here. Most of the people simply made up their minds that what must be, they must endure, because anything else would only be a change for the worse.There were a few, however, who did not take this view. The first to suggest that some might go away was Marcus Colonus. He spoke of it to a little group of his friends while they were in the forest cutting wood. Sylvius, whose wife and children were killed when the stones fell, and Urso the shaggy hunter, who never feared anything, man or beast, and Muraena the metal-worker, a restless fellow who knew that he could get a living wherever men used plows and weapons, all agreed that if Colonus went they would go. If ten heads of households joined the party, it would make a clan. But first the head of the village must be consulted.[pg 19]Old Vitalos was the grandfather of Marcus Colonus and related in one way or another to nearly every person in the village. When his grandson came to him and told what he had in mind, the old chief stroked his long white beard and did not answer at once. He seemed to be thinking, and he thought for a long time.Before written histories, or pictured records, or even songs telling the history of a people, were in use, the memories of the old folk formed the only source of information that there was. As old men will, they told what they knew over and over again, and those who heard, even if they did not know they were remembering it, often remembered a story and told it over again, when their time came. The experiences and the wisdom that old Vitalos had gathered in the eighty years of his useful life were stored in his mind in layers, like silt in the bed of a river. Now he was digging down into his memory for something that had happened a long time ago.When he had done thinking, he spoke.“My son,”he said,“you tell me that you desire to go forth and make your home in another land.”“I desire it not, my father,”said Colonus,“unless it is the will of the gods. I have thought that it may be best.”[pg 20]He did not know it, but while the old man’s mind was busy with the past, his keen old eyes were busy with the strong, well-built figure, the stubborn chin and the fearless eye of this man of his own blood. Colonus walked with the long, sure step of the man who knows where he is going. The fingers of his hand were square-tipped and rugged, the kind that can work. He was Saturn’s own man, made to work the land and produce food for his people. He would not give up easily, nor would he be dismayed by difficulties.“And where will you go?”was the chief’s next question.“That I do not know,”said Colonus.“Yet something I do know. The mountain folk are not friends to us, and we should have to fight them. Their land is all one fortress, not easy to take. To the sea we will not go, for we know nothing of the ways of the sea-tamers. Perhaps our gods would not help us in those things, which are strange to our lives. There remains the plain beyond the marsh, where the river runs out of the valley. I have been there only once, but I remember it. Around it are mountains, and the plain itself is broken by low hills, as we have seen from our heights. In such a land we might live according to customs of our fore[pg 21]fathers. The little hills can be defended, and if enemies come we can see them from far off. Is this a good plan that we make, my father?”The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar, which burned in his house as in every other house of the village; then he looked keenly at his grandson.Illustration: The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar“There are two ways of living in a strange place, Marcus Colonus,”he said.“One is, to live after the manner of those who are born there, obey their gods, learn their law, eat their food, work as they do, join in their feasts and their games. The other is to fight them, and drive[pg 22]them away, or make them your servants. Which is your choice?”Colonus hesitated.“My father,”he said,“to take the first path, I must change my nature and become another man, which I would not do even if I could. Here or in another country, or in the moon if men could go there, I should be Colonus, the farmer,—not a sailor, or a trader, or any other man. To take the second way I must be leader of many fighting men, and this is not possible, since if we go we must take our wives and children. It is in my mind, my father, that there may be a middle way. If we hold to our own customs and are faithful to our own gods and to one another, surely the gods should keep faith with us. If we hurt not the people of the land where we go, but stand ready to defend ourselves against any who try to attack us, they may allow us to live as we please. If not, then must we fight for the right to live.”The old chief smiled.“My son,”he said,“you are wise with the wisdom of youth. Yet sometimes that is better than the unbelief of age. It is better to die fighting strangers than to die by starvation, or to fall upon one another, and I have had fear that one or the other might happen here, for truly the land is changed. It may be that this plan of yours shall end in new branching[pg 23]out of our people, the Ramnes, and in new power to our gods,—and if so, surely the gods will lead you.“Now I have a story to tell you, and you will give careful heed to it, and not speak of it lightly, but store it away in the secret places of your mind. Sit down here, close to me, for I do not wish to be heard by any listener.“Many years ago, before you were born, or ever the road was made over the marsh or the bridge across the river, our people were at war with a strange people from the north. My son, whom you resemble, went to fight against them and did not come back. Whether he died in battle and was left on some unknown field we did not know. We never knew, until in after years, one who was taken prisoner with him came back, his hair white as snow, and told what he had seen.“In that country of which you have spoken, where a plain stretches away toward the sea, and is guarded with mountains and divided by a yellow river, there are people who speak a language like ours and are sons of Mars, as we are. Some live in the hills and some in the plain, and some on the Long White Mountain. Beyond the river the people are strange in every way and their gods are also strange and terrible.“Now among the people of the Long White[pg 24]Mountain was a chief with two sons, and when he died the elder should have been ruler in his place. But the younger one, an evil man, stole into his brother’s place and killed his sons, and forbade his daughter to marry. Here my son was taken as a captive, and he became a servant to that chief.“The daughter of the elder brother was a fair woman, and my son was a strong and comely man, and in secret they married. Then did my son escape, thinking to come back with an army and bring away his wife with their twin boys. But the wicked chief discovered what had been done, and killed the mother and the children, and sent a war party after my son to kill him also. He could have escaped even then, for he crossed a river in flood by swimming. But when they called to him that his wife and her two sons were dead, he returned across the river and fought his pursuers until they killed him. Then he went to find his beloved in that unknown country which is neither land nor water and is full of ghosts.“Now it is in my mind that if that evil chief is dead, the people of his country may welcome you among them. Or if he is not dead, and the elder brother still lives, he may be your friend, since we are of one race and speak one language.[pg 25]In any case it is well for you to know what has happened there in other days, for before we plant a field we desire to know whether wheat, or lentils, or thistles, or salt was last sown there. I was told also that the evil man who killed the mother and the babes declared that the father of the children was the god Mars himself, not wishing that any kinswoman of his should be known to be a wife to a captive and a stranger. Now, my son, go, and peace go with you.”Colonus rose and bowed to the old man, and went home.Now the way was clear to prepare for the emigration, and from time to time others came to talk about it and join the company. Besides the four men who had made the plan in the first place, there were finally seven others,—Tullius, who knew all the ancient laws and customs well, Piscinus the fisherman, Pollio the leather worker, Cossus, an old and wary fighter, the two Nasos, quiet and able farmers (all of whose children had the big nose that marked the family), and Calvo, whose great-grandfather had bequeathed to his descendants a tendency to grow bald young. Calvo already had a little thin spot on the crown of his head, though he was not much over thirty. Among them they had all the most necessary trades and could supply most things they needed.[pg 26]But every one of them was also a good farmer; in fact, in such migrations the settlers were most generally known ascolonior farmers. They had to understand the care of the land in order to get through the first years without starving to death, for there were no cities where they went.Muraena could make unusually fine weapons, and he took care that each of the party should be provided with the best that he could make. The grain was chosen with care, for when they found the place for their settlement they would want it for seed. The finest animals were chosen to stock the farms. The women who were not going made gifts of their best weaving to the housewives who were. The lads who were old enough to fight gave especial attention to their bows and their slings, and spent a good deal of time practicing.All the men who had agreed to go had sons and daughters except Sylvius, and most of the children were old enough to do something to help. They were very much excited, and secretly most of them were rather scared.There was no priest in the company; that is to say, there was no man who had nothing else to do, for that was not the custom among the Ramnes. They chose a man they all trusted for this office. Tullius was chosen priest by the[pg 27]coloni. It was due to his advice that the water jars and the leather bottles for water-carrying were well selected, strong and numerous. It was a hobby of his, the drinking of pure water, and he believed it had more to do with health than any other one thing. He also believed that the gods do not protect the careless and the lazy. For instance, if a man were to pray to Mars to keep his house from being destroyed by fire, and then burn brush on a windy day in summer, when the wind was blowing that way, and a spark happened to light on the thatch, Mars would not be likely to put it out. He would let it burn. If the gods went to the trouble of saving people from the consequences of not using common sense, they would show themselves to be fools, and not in the least god-like. Tullius prayed at all proper times, but when he was working he worked with his head as well as with his hands. He said that that was what heads were for.

Whatever the strange and terrible outbreak of the Mountain of Fire could have meant, the people had no thought of abandoning the land. Within a few days they were repairing or rebuilding their huts and returning to the habits of their daily life. Centuries might pass, more than one such calamity might befall the village, but there would still be men living on the same spot where their forefathers lived, on the slopes of the Mountain of Fire.

All the same, a great change had taken place, and they felt it more as time went on. They began to see that the land that had once brought forth food for them all would not now feed them with any such abundance. They would be lucky if they could secure enough food to keep them alive. Some of the fields were burned over by the lava stream; some were ruined by the dammed-up river. Cattle and sheep had been killed or had run away. Much of the grain and[pg 18]wool and other provision for the future had been destroyed. It was a very hard winter.

Yet rather than leave their homes and be strangers and outcasts without a country, they endured cold and scarcity and every kind of discomfort, even suffering. Outside the land they knew were unknown terrors,—races who did not speak their language or worship their gods; soil whose ways they did not understand, and very likely far worse troubles than had come upon them here. Most of the people simply made up their minds that what must be, they must endure, because anything else would only be a change for the worse.

There were a few, however, who did not take this view. The first to suggest that some might go away was Marcus Colonus. He spoke of it to a little group of his friends while they were in the forest cutting wood. Sylvius, whose wife and children were killed when the stones fell, and Urso the shaggy hunter, who never feared anything, man or beast, and Muraena the metal-worker, a restless fellow who knew that he could get a living wherever men used plows and weapons, all agreed that if Colonus went they would go. If ten heads of households joined the party, it would make a clan. But first the head of the village must be consulted.

Old Vitalos was the grandfather of Marcus Colonus and related in one way or another to nearly every person in the village. When his grandson came to him and told what he had in mind, the old chief stroked his long white beard and did not answer at once. He seemed to be thinking, and he thought for a long time.

Before written histories, or pictured records, or even songs telling the history of a people, were in use, the memories of the old folk formed the only source of information that there was. As old men will, they told what they knew over and over again, and those who heard, even if they did not know they were remembering it, often remembered a story and told it over again, when their time came. The experiences and the wisdom that old Vitalos had gathered in the eighty years of his useful life were stored in his mind in layers, like silt in the bed of a river. Now he was digging down into his memory for something that had happened a long time ago.

When he had done thinking, he spoke.

“My son,”he said,“you tell me that you desire to go forth and make your home in another land.”

“I desire it not, my father,”said Colonus,“unless it is the will of the gods. I have thought that it may be best.”

He did not know it, but while the old man’s mind was busy with the past, his keen old eyes were busy with the strong, well-built figure, the stubborn chin and the fearless eye of this man of his own blood. Colonus walked with the long, sure step of the man who knows where he is going. The fingers of his hand were square-tipped and rugged, the kind that can work. He was Saturn’s own man, made to work the land and produce food for his people. He would not give up easily, nor would he be dismayed by difficulties.

“And where will you go?”was the chief’s next question.

“That I do not know,”said Colonus.“Yet something I do know. The mountain folk are not friends to us, and we should have to fight them. Their land is all one fortress, not easy to take. To the sea we will not go, for we know nothing of the ways of the sea-tamers. Perhaps our gods would not help us in those things, which are strange to our lives. There remains the plain beyond the marsh, where the river runs out of the valley. I have been there only once, but I remember it. Around it are mountains, and the plain itself is broken by low hills, as we have seen from our heights. In such a land we might live according to customs of our fore[pg 21]fathers. The little hills can be defended, and if enemies come we can see them from far off. Is this a good plan that we make, my father?”

The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar, which burned in his house as in every other house of the village; then he looked keenly at his grandson.

Illustration: The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar

“There are two ways of living in a strange place, Marcus Colonus,”he said.“One is, to live after the manner of those who are born there, obey their gods, learn their law, eat their food, work as they do, join in their feasts and their games. The other is to fight them, and drive[pg 22]them away, or make them your servants. Which is your choice?”

Colonus hesitated.“My father,”he said,“to take the first path, I must change my nature and become another man, which I would not do even if I could. Here or in another country, or in the moon if men could go there, I should be Colonus, the farmer,—not a sailor, or a trader, or any other man. To take the second way I must be leader of many fighting men, and this is not possible, since if we go we must take our wives and children. It is in my mind, my father, that there may be a middle way. If we hold to our own customs and are faithful to our own gods and to one another, surely the gods should keep faith with us. If we hurt not the people of the land where we go, but stand ready to defend ourselves against any who try to attack us, they may allow us to live as we please. If not, then must we fight for the right to live.”

The old chief smiled.“My son,”he said,“you are wise with the wisdom of youth. Yet sometimes that is better than the unbelief of age. It is better to die fighting strangers than to die by starvation, or to fall upon one another, and I have had fear that one or the other might happen here, for truly the land is changed. It may be that this plan of yours shall end in new branching[pg 23]out of our people, the Ramnes, and in new power to our gods,—and if so, surely the gods will lead you.

“Now I have a story to tell you, and you will give careful heed to it, and not speak of it lightly, but store it away in the secret places of your mind. Sit down here, close to me, for I do not wish to be heard by any listener.

“Many years ago, before you were born, or ever the road was made over the marsh or the bridge across the river, our people were at war with a strange people from the north. My son, whom you resemble, went to fight against them and did not come back. Whether he died in battle and was left on some unknown field we did not know. We never knew, until in after years, one who was taken prisoner with him came back, his hair white as snow, and told what he had seen.

“In that country of which you have spoken, where a plain stretches away toward the sea, and is guarded with mountains and divided by a yellow river, there are people who speak a language like ours and are sons of Mars, as we are. Some live in the hills and some in the plain, and some on the Long White Mountain. Beyond the river the people are strange in every way and their gods are also strange and terrible.

“Now among the people of the Long White[pg 24]Mountain was a chief with two sons, and when he died the elder should have been ruler in his place. But the younger one, an evil man, stole into his brother’s place and killed his sons, and forbade his daughter to marry. Here my son was taken as a captive, and he became a servant to that chief.

“The daughter of the elder brother was a fair woman, and my son was a strong and comely man, and in secret they married. Then did my son escape, thinking to come back with an army and bring away his wife with their twin boys. But the wicked chief discovered what had been done, and killed the mother and the children, and sent a war party after my son to kill him also. He could have escaped even then, for he crossed a river in flood by swimming. But when they called to him that his wife and her two sons were dead, he returned across the river and fought his pursuers until they killed him. Then he went to find his beloved in that unknown country which is neither land nor water and is full of ghosts.

“Now it is in my mind that if that evil chief is dead, the people of his country may welcome you among them. Or if he is not dead, and the elder brother still lives, he may be your friend, since we are of one race and speak one language.[pg 25]In any case it is well for you to know what has happened there in other days, for before we plant a field we desire to know whether wheat, or lentils, or thistles, or salt was last sown there. I was told also that the evil man who killed the mother and the babes declared that the father of the children was the god Mars himself, not wishing that any kinswoman of his should be known to be a wife to a captive and a stranger. Now, my son, go, and peace go with you.”

Colonus rose and bowed to the old man, and went home.

Now the way was clear to prepare for the emigration, and from time to time others came to talk about it and join the company. Besides the four men who had made the plan in the first place, there were finally seven others,—Tullius, who knew all the ancient laws and customs well, Piscinus the fisherman, Pollio the leather worker, Cossus, an old and wary fighter, the two Nasos, quiet and able farmers (all of whose children had the big nose that marked the family), and Calvo, whose great-grandfather had bequeathed to his descendants a tendency to grow bald young. Calvo already had a little thin spot on the crown of his head, though he was not much over thirty. Among them they had all the most necessary trades and could supply most things they needed.[pg 26]But every one of them was also a good farmer; in fact, in such migrations the settlers were most generally known ascolonior farmers. They had to understand the care of the land in order to get through the first years without starving to death, for there were no cities where they went.

Muraena could make unusually fine weapons, and he took care that each of the party should be provided with the best that he could make. The grain was chosen with care, for when they found the place for their settlement they would want it for seed. The finest animals were chosen to stock the farms. The women who were not going made gifts of their best weaving to the housewives who were. The lads who were old enough to fight gave especial attention to their bows and their slings, and spent a good deal of time practicing.

All the men who had agreed to go had sons and daughters except Sylvius, and most of the children were old enough to do something to help. They were very much excited, and secretly most of them were rather scared.

There was no priest in the company; that is to say, there was no man who had nothing else to do, for that was not the custom among the Ramnes. They chose a man they all trusted for this office. Tullius was chosen priest by the[pg 27]coloni. It was due to his advice that the water jars and the leather bottles for water-carrying were well selected, strong and numerous. It was a hobby of his, the drinking of pure water, and he believed it had more to do with health than any other one thing. He also believed that the gods do not protect the careless and the lazy. For instance, if a man were to pray to Mars to keep his house from being destroyed by fire, and then burn brush on a windy day in summer, when the wind was blowing that way, and a spark happened to light on the thatch, Mars would not be likely to put it out. He would let it burn. If the gods went to the trouble of saving people from the consequences of not using common sense, they would show themselves to be fools, and not in the least god-like. Tullius prayed at all proper times, but when he was working he worked with his head as well as with his hands. He said that that was what heads were for.

[pg 28]IIITHE SACRED YEARIn the month of spring when day and night are equal, and the young lambs frisk on new grass, a company of young men and girls went slowly out from a little town on the eastern side of a great mountain range. The long narrow country stretching out into the sea, which is now called Italy, is divided by this range lengthwise into two parts, and in the earliest days of the country the people on one side had hardly anything to do with those on the other. On the coast toward the sunrise were many harbors, and seafaring men from other countries came there sometimes to trade. On the other side, the young people who were now setting their faces westward did not at all know what they would find.They were all of about the same age, and they looked grave and a little anxious; some of the girls had been crying. The day had come when they were to leave the place where they had been born and brought up and go into an unknown[pg 29]world, and it was not likely that they would ever come back.They belonged to the Sabine people, who used to live on the banks of the rivers not far from the coast, and kept cattle and sheep and goats, and raised grain and different kinds of vegetables, and had vineyards. The land was so rich that they had more food and other things than they needed, and used to trade more or less with the strangers from other countries. So many strangers came there and settled in course of time that the first inhabitants were crowded back toward the mountains, away from the sea. Then war parties of Umbrians from the north came pushing their way into the country, and the peaceable farming folk were obliged to retreat still farther up the rivers into the mountain, and clear new land and settle it. This happened all a long time ago. It was not easy to live there, and they were poorer than they used to be, for so much of the land was rock and forest that they had to spend a great deal of their time getting it into a fit condition for either grain or cattle or anything else. But they learned to do most things for themselves, as mountain people do; they were not afraid of hard work or danger, and although they lived plainly they were comfortable.[pg 30]But even here they were not let alone. About twenty years earlier, before any of these boys and girls were born, the Umbrian war parties came up into the higher valleys, and the Sabines had to fight for their very lives. They won the war and drove back the invaders in the end, but it began to seem that some day they would be wiped out altogether and forgotten.After this war there were some hard years. Many of the men had been killed, and the fields had been neglected when the fighting was going on. Where the enemy came they trampled down and ruined the vineyards, and burned houses and barns, and drove off the flocks and herds for their own use. That one year of war almost ruined the work that had been done in half a lifetime. If they were to be obliged to spend half their time defending what land they had, every year would be worse than the last.Finally Flamen the priest, the man most respected in the central and largest of the towns, spoke of an old custom called the“sacred spring.”It was a method of making sacrifice to the gods when things came to a very evil pass indeed. In a way it was a sacrifice, and in a way it was a chance of saving something from the general ruin. Flamen believed that if they kept a“sacred spring”their guardian god,[pg 31]Mars, would help them. All this happened a long time before the calamity that drove the emigrants to set out from the Mountain of Fire. There are all sorts of reasons why people change their place of living and begin new settlements in a strange country, but in those days it was a much more serious matter than it is now, and it took almost a life-and-death reason to make them do it.When villages agreed to keep a sacred year, as these finally did, they gave to the gods everything that was born in that year. The cattle, sheep, goats and poultry were killed in sacrifice, when they were grown. But the children born that spring were not killed. They were taught that when they were old enough they were to go out and build homes for themselves in another land, trusting in the great and wise god Mars to show them where to go. If this was done, even though the Umbrians attacked the country again and again, and killed off the people or made them slaves, there would still be Sabine men and women living in the old ways, somewhere in the world. And now the time had come for them to set out to find their new home.Flamen the priest gave a daughter in the year of the sacred spring; Maurs the smith gave a son. Almost every family in all the country[pg 32]round had a son or daughter or at least a near relative who was going. Some of the young people were married before the day came for them to go; in fact, there were a great many brides and grooms in the party. The parents had given their children plenty of seed grain and roots and plants, cuttings of shrubs and trees and vines, animals and fowls to stock their farms, provision for the journey, and whatever clothing and other goods they could carry without the risk of being delayed or tempting plunderers to kill them for their riches. Everything that could be done was done to make their great undertaking successful.At daybreak on the day that had been decided upon, the farewell ceremonies began. Hymns were sung and a feast was held, prayers and sacrifices were made; there were all sorts of farewell wishes and loving hopes and instructions. Nothing, however, could make it anything but a very solemn occasion. The young people must go beyond the mountains, for on this side they could have no hope of finding any place to live. No one knew what awaited them. But whatever happened, no one would have dreamed of breaking the promise made to the gods. A pledge is a pledge, and not the shrewdest cheat can deceive the gods, for they know men’s hearts.[pg 33]Illustration: All the young voices took up the songFlam’na, the wife of young Mauros the maker of swords, looked back just once as they lost sight of the village. Then she led in the singing of the last of the farewell songs. She had a beautiful voice, clear and strong and sweet; her husband’s deeper tones joined hers, and then all the young voices took up the song as streams run into a river. The fathers and mothers heard the wild music of their singing floating down from the mountain forest as they climbed the narrow trail. They were following a path which the young men knew from their hunting expeditions, which led around the shoulder of the mountain to a pass[pg 34]through which they could cross and go down the other side. Now that they were fairly on their way, the care of the young animals they were driving, all of them full of life and not at all used to keeping together in strange woods, took up most of the attention of the whole party.On the western slopes, as far as the hunters had ever gone, there were no people living in villages—only scattered woodcutters and hunters, and here and there a poor ignorant family in a little clearing. If they went far enough down to reach the upper valleys of streams or rivers, they might find just the sort of place they wanted for their new home. Others must have done this in the past, or there would never have been the custom of the sacred spring, for the emigrant parties would have been all killed off or starved to death. The young men said that what others had done they could do, and they went valiantly on, chanting a marching song.In these spring days, as time passed, the mornings were earlier and the twilights later. They lived well while their provisions lasted, and there was game in the forest and fish in the little streams. They always carried coals from their camp fires to light the next fires, and in the cool evenings the leaping flames were pleasant.[pg 35]They also kept wild beasts from coming too near.There were three groups of the young people, from three different villages. At night they gathered in three camps; each“company”which ate bread together was made up of relatives and friends. After they had crossed the mountain pass and before they had gone very far on the other side, they halted for a day to talk matters over and decide what to do next. It was very important now to take the right course.The youths gathered under a huge oak to hold a council while their wives and sisters and cousins busied themselves with affairs of their own. The men would have to do the fighting, and the girls were quite willing to leave the general plans to them. They were a sober and serious group of young fellows as they sat there in the dappling sunshine. It was enough to make any man serious. Mars had brought them so far without any serious mishap, and he might go on protecting them all the rest of the way; but the question was, how to discover what was best to do. All the ways down the mountain looked very much alike, and yet one might lead into a country inhabited by fierce and cruel enemies, and another into a barren rocky waste, and another to a fertile valley.Mauros was their leader, so far as they had[pg 36]one, but he called on each man in turn to say what he thought. There seemed to be a good deal of doubt about the wisdom of so large a party traveling together. The chances were against their finding a valley large enough for all to live in. They were not likely to find so much cleared land or good pasture in any one place. If they were to separate, and each party took a different direction, one or another certainly ought to be able to find the right sort of place. Perhaps all of them would. Even one of the camps was strong enough to defend itself against any ordinary enemy. They were all young and strong, active and full of courage, and as time went on they would be traveling lighter and lighter, for the provisions would be eaten up and the spare animals killed for food. They decided to do this, to offer a sacrifice to Mars and pray to him to direct them. The next morning all were ready to go on and waited only for a sign.Each of the gods had certain favorite animals, birds and plants. Mars had plenty of servants he could send to do his will, and surely he would show them what to do.Flam’na stood with her cousins, watching Mauros as he stood in the center of the silent group under the great oak tree. The fires were[pg 37]flickering slowly down to red coals, and a little wind blew from the west. Suddenly their lead-ox, the wisest of the team, lifted his head and sniffed the breeze, pawed the earth, bellowed, and plunged down a grassy glade, followed more slowly by the other oxen and the whole party in that camp. The ox was one of the beasts of Mars. Nothing could be clearer than this. Mauros turned and waved a laughing farewell to the other camps, and raced on to make sure that the ox did not get out of sight. Before they had gone very far they came to a tiny brook, which went chuckling on as if it knew something interesting. They followed it downward and began to find more and more grass as the valley widened and the trees grew less thick. Finally they found a place where the water was good and the soil rich, and there was room for all their beasts to graze. They called the town they built there Bovianum, after the ox of Mars. They were sometimes called by their neighbors the Bovii, the cattlemen, for herds of cattle were not very common in that part of the country.In the camp to the right of this, not long after the departure of the ox, one of the girls saw something red moving high up on the trunk of a tree, and pointed it out to her brother. His eyes followed hers, and soon all the company[pg 38]gathered in the edge of the woodlands, watching that scarlet dot among the thick leaves. Then, with a sudden rush of little wings, a green woodpecker flew down from the tree top and perched on a bough just over their heads. He looked down knowingly into the upturned, eager faces, and with a cheery call flew away down a ravine, and alighted again. Breathless, wide-eyed and silent, they ventured nearer. He beat his tiny tattoo on the bark as if he were sounding a drum, and flew on. Now scarlet was the color of Mars, the drum was his favorite instrument of music, and Picus the woodpecker was his own bird. Following their little feathered guide, they went farther and farther north until they found a home among the spurs of the Apennines. They called themselves the Picentes, the Woodpecker People, and their children all knew the story of the sacred spring and the bird of Mars.The third company had no time to watch the others, for some wolves had winded their sheep, and the young men had to run to fight them off. Some of them chased the skulking gray thieves for some distance and came back with the news that the wolves had led them southward to a rocky height, where they could look over the tops of the trees below and see an uncommonly fine place for the colony. This was as plain a sign[pg 39]as one could ask for, and the whole party, in great satisfaction and relief, went on to the home that the wolves had found for them. The wolf was another of the beasts of Mars. This settlement took the name of the Herpini, the Wolf People.All three of the Sabine colonies prospered and grew strong, and although they had little to do with each other they lived in peace with relatives and neighbors. There came to be many villages on the slopes of the Apennines in which the Sabine language was spoken. This was the last time that they were forced to keep a Sacred Year, for the Umbrian war parties left them alone, and perhaps did not even know where they were; and the mountain land was pleasant and fertile, out of the way of floods. There was no reason in the world why the brave young couples who founded their homes here, and worked and played and kept holiday, and loved the green earth as all their forefathers had loved it, should not be prosperous and happy, and they were, for many a long year.

In the month of spring when day and night are equal, and the young lambs frisk on new grass, a company of young men and girls went slowly out from a little town on the eastern side of a great mountain range. The long narrow country stretching out into the sea, which is now called Italy, is divided by this range lengthwise into two parts, and in the earliest days of the country the people on one side had hardly anything to do with those on the other. On the coast toward the sunrise were many harbors, and seafaring men from other countries came there sometimes to trade. On the other side, the young people who were now setting their faces westward did not at all know what they would find.

They were all of about the same age, and they looked grave and a little anxious; some of the girls had been crying. The day had come when they were to leave the place where they had been born and brought up and go into an unknown[pg 29]world, and it was not likely that they would ever come back.

They belonged to the Sabine people, who used to live on the banks of the rivers not far from the coast, and kept cattle and sheep and goats, and raised grain and different kinds of vegetables, and had vineyards. The land was so rich that they had more food and other things than they needed, and used to trade more or less with the strangers from other countries. So many strangers came there and settled in course of time that the first inhabitants were crowded back toward the mountains, away from the sea. Then war parties of Umbrians from the north came pushing their way into the country, and the peaceable farming folk were obliged to retreat still farther up the rivers into the mountain, and clear new land and settle it. This happened all a long time ago. It was not easy to live there, and they were poorer than they used to be, for so much of the land was rock and forest that they had to spend a great deal of their time getting it into a fit condition for either grain or cattle or anything else. But they learned to do most things for themselves, as mountain people do; they were not afraid of hard work or danger, and although they lived plainly they were comfortable.

But even here they were not let alone. About twenty years earlier, before any of these boys and girls were born, the Umbrian war parties came up into the higher valleys, and the Sabines had to fight for their very lives. They won the war and drove back the invaders in the end, but it began to seem that some day they would be wiped out altogether and forgotten.

After this war there were some hard years. Many of the men had been killed, and the fields had been neglected when the fighting was going on. Where the enemy came they trampled down and ruined the vineyards, and burned houses and barns, and drove off the flocks and herds for their own use. That one year of war almost ruined the work that had been done in half a lifetime. If they were to be obliged to spend half their time defending what land they had, every year would be worse than the last.

Finally Flamen the priest, the man most respected in the central and largest of the towns, spoke of an old custom called the“sacred spring.”It was a method of making sacrifice to the gods when things came to a very evil pass indeed. In a way it was a sacrifice, and in a way it was a chance of saving something from the general ruin. Flamen believed that if they kept a“sacred spring”their guardian god,[pg 31]Mars, would help them. All this happened a long time before the calamity that drove the emigrants to set out from the Mountain of Fire. There are all sorts of reasons why people change their place of living and begin new settlements in a strange country, but in those days it was a much more serious matter than it is now, and it took almost a life-and-death reason to make them do it.

When villages agreed to keep a sacred year, as these finally did, they gave to the gods everything that was born in that year. The cattle, sheep, goats and poultry were killed in sacrifice, when they were grown. But the children born that spring were not killed. They were taught that when they were old enough they were to go out and build homes for themselves in another land, trusting in the great and wise god Mars to show them where to go. If this was done, even though the Umbrians attacked the country again and again, and killed off the people or made them slaves, there would still be Sabine men and women living in the old ways, somewhere in the world. And now the time had come for them to set out to find their new home.

Flamen the priest gave a daughter in the year of the sacred spring; Maurs the smith gave a son. Almost every family in all the country[pg 32]round had a son or daughter or at least a near relative who was going. Some of the young people were married before the day came for them to go; in fact, there were a great many brides and grooms in the party. The parents had given their children plenty of seed grain and roots and plants, cuttings of shrubs and trees and vines, animals and fowls to stock their farms, provision for the journey, and whatever clothing and other goods they could carry without the risk of being delayed or tempting plunderers to kill them for their riches. Everything that could be done was done to make their great undertaking successful.

At daybreak on the day that had been decided upon, the farewell ceremonies began. Hymns were sung and a feast was held, prayers and sacrifices were made; there were all sorts of farewell wishes and loving hopes and instructions. Nothing, however, could make it anything but a very solemn occasion. The young people must go beyond the mountains, for on this side they could have no hope of finding any place to live. No one knew what awaited them. But whatever happened, no one would have dreamed of breaking the promise made to the gods. A pledge is a pledge, and not the shrewdest cheat can deceive the gods, for they know men’s hearts.

Illustration: All the young voices took up the song

Flam’na, the wife of young Mauros the maker of swords, looked back just once as they lost sight of the village. Then she led in the singing of the last of the farewell songs. She had a beautiful voice, clear and strong and sweet; her husband’s deeper tones joined hers, and then all the young voices took up the song as streams run into a river. The fathers and mothers heard the wild music of their singing floating down from the mountain forest as they climbed the narrow trail. They were following a path which the young men knew from their hunting expeditions, which led around the shoulder of the mountain to a pass[pg 34]through which they could cross and go down the other side. Now that they were fairly on their way, the care of the young animals they were driving, all of them full of life and not at all used to keeping together in strange woods, took up most of the attention of the whole party.

On the western slopes, as far as the hunters had ever gone, there were no people living in villages—only scattered woodcutters and hunters, and here and there a poor ignorant family in a little clearing. If they went far enough down to reach the upper valleys of streams or rivers, they might find just the sort of place they wanted for their new home. Others must have done this in the past, or there would never have been the custom of the sacred spring, for the emigrant parties would have been all killed off or starved to death. The young men said that what others had done they could do, and they went valiantly on, chanting a marching song.

In these spring days, as time passed, the mornings were earlier and the twilights later. They lived well while their provisions lasted, and there was game in the forest and fish in the little streams. They always carried coals from their camp fires to light the next fires, and in the cool evenings the leaping flames were pleasant.[pg 35]They also kept wild beasts from coming too near.

There were three groups of the young people, from three different villages. At night they gathered in three camps; each“company”which ate bread together was made up of relatives and friends. After they had crossed the mountain pass and before they had gone very far on the other side, they halted for a day to talk matters over and decide what to do next. It was very important now to take the right course.

The youths gathered under a huge oak to hold a council while their wives and sisters and cousins busied themselves with affairs of their own. The men would have to do the fighting, and the girls were quite willing to leave the general plans to them. They were a sober and serious group of young fellows as they sat there in the dappling sunshine. It was enough to make any man serious. Mars had brought them so far without any serious mishap, and he might go on protecting them all the rest of the way; but the question was, how to discover what was best to do. All the ways down the mountain looked very much alike, and yet one might lead into a country inhabited by fierce and cruel enemies, and another into a barren rocky waste, and another to a fertile valley.

Mauros was their leader, so far as they had[pg 36]one, but he called on each man in turn to say what he thought. There seemed to be a good deal of doubt about the wisdom of so large a party traveling together. The chances were against their finding a valley large enough for all to live in. They were not likely to find so much cleared land or good pasture in any one place. If they were to separate, and each party took a different direction, one or another certainly ought to be able to find the right sort of place. Perhaps all of them would. Even one of the camps was strong enough to defend itself against any ordinary enemy. They were all young and strong, active and full of courage, and as time went on they would be traveling lighter and lighter, for the provisions would be eaten up and the spare animals killed for food. They decided to do this, to offer a sacrifice to Mars and pray to him to direct them. The next morning all were ready to go on and waited only for a sign.

Each of the gods had certain favorite animals, birds and plants. Mars had plenty of servants he could send to do his will, and surely he would show them what to do.

Flam’na stood with her cousins, watching Mauros as he stood in the center of the silent group under the great oak tree. The fires were[pg 37]flickering slowly down to red coals, and a little wind blew from the west. Suddenly their lead-ox, the wisest of the team, lifted his head and sniffed the breeze, pawed the earth, bellowed, and plunged down a grassy glade, followed more slowly by the other oxen and the whole party in that camp. The ox was one of the beasts of Mars. Nothing could be clearer than this. Mauros turned and waved a laughing farewell to the other camps, and raced on to make sure that the ox did not get out of sight. Before they had gone very far they came to a tiny brook, which went chuckling on as if it knew something interesting. They followed it downward and began to find more and more grass as the valley widened and the trees grew less thick. Finally they found a place where the water was good and the soil rich, and there was room for all their beasts to graze. They called the town they built there Bovianum, after the ox of Mars. They were sometimes called by their neighbors the Bovii, the cattlemen, for herds of cattle were not very common in that part of the country.

In the camp to the right of this, not long after the departure of the ox, one of the girls saw something red moving high up on the trunk of a tree, and pointed it out to her brother. His eyes followed hers, and soon all the company[pg 38]gathered in the edge of the woodlands, watching that scarlet dot among the thick leaves. Then, with a sudden rush of little wings, a green woodpecker flew down from the tree top and perched on a bough just over their heads. He looked down knowingly into the upturned, eager faces, and with a cheery call flew away down a ravine, and alighted again. Breathless, wide-eyed and silent, they ventured nearer. He beat his tiny tattoo on the bark as if he were sounding a drum, and flew on. Now scarlet was the color of Mars, the drum was his favorite instrument of music, and Picus the woodpecker was his own bird. Following their little feathered guide, they went farther and farther north until they found a home among the spurs of the Apennines. They called themselves the Picentes, the Woodpecker People, and their children all knew the story of the sacred spring and the bird of Mars.

The third company had no time to watch the others, for some wolves had winded their sheep, and the young men had to run to fight them off. Some of them chased the skulking gray thieves for some distance and came back with the news that the wolves had led them southward to a rocky height, where they could look over the tops of the trees below and see an uncommonly fine place for the colony. This was as plain a sign[pg 39]as one could ask for, and the whole party, in great satisfaction and relief, went on to the home that the wolves had found for them. The wolf was another of the beasts of Mars. This settlement took the name of the Herpini, the Wolf People.

All three of the Sabine colonies prospered and grew strong, and although they had little to do with each other they lived in peace with relatives and neighbors. There came to be many villages on the slopes of the Apennines in which the Sabine language was spoken. This was the last time that they were forced to keep a Sacred Year, for the Umbrian war parties left them alone, and perhaps did not even know where they were; and the mountain land was pleasant and fertile, out of the way of floods. There was no reason in the world why the brave young couples who founded their homes here, and worked and played and kept holiday, and loved the green earth as all their forefathers had loved it, should not be prosperous and happy, and they were, for many a long year.

Back to IndexNext