VII

[pg 81]VIIMASTERLESS MENThe story the robbers had to tell, when they returned to their captain, was not a very likely one. It was so unlikely that they took time to talk the matter over thoroughly before attempting to face him. Perhaps it would be better to tell a lie, if they could concoct one that would do. The trouble was that they could not think of any explanation for their failure, that was likely to satisfy him any better than the plain facts.Of course it seemed impossible that a man and a wolf should be traveling peaceably in company,—to say nothing of taking a child out of the hands of several strong and reckless men. But even so, where had they gone? One of the men had been quick enough to thrust with his spear at the wolf as he got it against the sky,—and it went through nothing. He forgot that the motion of an animal is usually quicker than the human eye, on such occasions. Moreover, though two of them went back down the path until they[pg 82]could hear the voices of the villagers, there was no sign of man, wolf or child. The conclusion they felt to be the only one possible was that the villagers’ gods had come and taken the child away from them, in the form of the wolf and the man. In that case they must be very powerful, so powerful that it would not be safe to attempt anything against that village in the future.Gubbo, who came from that village, assured them that its gods were powerful indeed. He had not, when he and the other man were watching it, seen anything like this man and wolf apparition, and it was certainly remarkable enough to attract attention. Neither had the country people ever mentioned such a thing. Privately, Gubbo did not believe much in gods, but he was afraid of them for all that, because he was not sure. Gubbo’s father had impressed upon him very hard that if he did wrong, bad luck would surely overtake him. The patience of the gods was great, but they knew everything, and in the end no man could escape them. Gubbo, wincing at the pain where the wolf’s teeth had caught him, was uncomfortably wondering whether his bad luck had begun. There had never been any other failure to kidnap somebody, when men were sent to do it. Perhaps the bad luck in this case came from the fact that one of the party was attacking[pg 83]his own relatives and friends. There would be more bad luck when the chief of the bandits heard of this thing. Gubbo decided to dodge any further trouble if he could, and he lagged behind and quietly slipped away, to find some other way of making a living. He intended to go on traveling for a long time, to be out of the way of his former comrades.It was just as well for him that he did this, for the men who returned to the den in the rocks and reported to the chief had a very bad time of it. The leader was executed, and so was the man who had had charge of the child. Of the other three, one died of the bite of the wolf and the others were very ill. After that, not a man of them could have been induced to join in an attack against that village. The chief wisely did not press the matter. After all, that was the nearest village of all those in their range, and it might not be altogether prudent to arouse the anger of the fighting men. It might lead to discovery.The Cub, as he made his way back to the hut of Faustulus, was doing a great deal of thinking. When he was younger he had sometimes dreamed of being captain of a band of outlaws, because that seemed the only chance to be captain of anything, for a fatherless boy. But he had no taste[pg 84]for kidnaping children or being a nuisance to peaceable and kindly people. Merely to think of those scoundrels made him hot all over. He would have liked to follow their trail up to their very den, for he had an idea that he knew where it was. One day, when he and Pincho had been hunting together, he had seen a place where men evidently lived, and lived without any sort of peaceful farming or other business. If that were the den of the banditti, they could easily make themselves the pest of the countryside, and what they had done would be nothing to what they could do. Although he did not himself know it, this boy was the kind of person whose mind leaps ahead and sees possibilities for others as well as himself,—evil as well as good.One day he asked his brother how he would like to gather the masterless men of all that neighborhood into a band of soldiery, to live by hunting and by fighting for any chief who would give them their living. They were growing too old to live much longer as they had lived. Perhaps if they could gather followers enough, they could go somewhere after awhile and make a place for themselves. First they might go to the Long White Mountain, where there was a rather large town, and see what the prospect was for such an undertaking. They had already[pg 85]taken part in one campaign, with some of the boys of the neighborhood, under the names of the Wolf and the Piper. All of the troop had some nickname or other. There was the Ram, whose head would crack an ordinary board in two; the Snake, who could wriggle out of any bonds ever tied—they had tried him time and again; Big Foot, Flop-Ear, Long Arm, and some others. They found the captain they had followed before glad to use them again and give them ordinary soldier rations. On the second night of their life in camp, a broad-shouldered and slightly bow-legged individual came and asked to see the head of the band. Gubbo did not recognize the young leader, but the latter knew him the moment he saw him. Gubbo explained that he had been a member of a company of banditti, had become disgusted with their ways, and left them. He would like to make an honest living.“What can you do?”asked the youth consideringly.Gubbo said that he could teach tricks in knife work to almost any man; also he could wrestle.“Try me,”said the Wolf, slipping out of his heavy tunic. He enjoyed the rough-and-tumble that followed more than he had anything since he used to play with his wolf. This man really[pg 86]was a fair match for him. Gubbo was taken into the band.“He is a brute,”said the Ram bluntly.“He is,”said the leader.“But he can teach you fellows something.”They learned a great deal from the villainous-looking newcomer, though if he had not been a little afraid of the young head of the troop, they might have paid a heavy price for their learning. The latter found out by judicious questioning that the den was where he had supposed it was. After a time he began to see that Gubbo was doing his men no good. The man was cruel, treacherous and base. Two or three times he had played tricks which others were blamed for. One day Gubbo heard that a merchant was coming along the road to the mountain villages, and at the same time he was sent on scout duty that way. He watched in the bushes until the man came along slowly, muffled in a long mantle, with a donkey loaded with panniers. He seemed to be old; his beard was white. Gubbo sprang on him; the man turned in that instant and met him with a knife thrust. Then the Wolf straightened up, dropped his white goat’s-hair beard and wig, and went back to camp. The bad luck that Gubbo feared had got him at last, and nobody mourned him at all.[pg 87]Wolf and the Piper and their troop spent some seasons in fighting and adventure, and then they disappeared. It was said that they had separated.This was true, but they had separated for a purpose. If the company went together to the lair of the banditti they might as well go blowing trumpets and beating drums; it would be known long before they came near. Their orders were to go by twos and threes, and when the moon was full to meet near a certain great rock that overlooked the valley where the river became a lake and then went on. One by one, as the young leader sat watching on this rock, dark forms came slipping through the shadows and joined him. Last of all came his brother, who had guided some of the party by a very roundabout way.When all were there, and sentinels posted, he unfolded his plan. Above the place where they now sat, among the tumbled rocks of a narrow valley, was the headquarters of a most pestiferous company of robbers. For years they had terrified and despoiled the people of the villages, and if any resisted they were tormented almost beyond endurance in many different ways. The people were expected to turn over to them at certain times and places practically everything they produced, except just enough for a bare living.[pg 88]Whatever the banditti did not use themselves, they sold for things that could not be got in the villages. The villagers never knew what they were to be allowed to have at the end of the year, and often they suffered for food and warm clothing; but they stayed there because they knew nowhere else to go. It was a miserable state of things.His plan was this. They were to steal upon this den of banditti and take it by surprise. Gubbo had said that it was not fortified to any extent, because the chief relied on the locality not being known. They were to kill the chief and such men as could not be trusted to behave themselves if they had a chance. Perhaps some would join the troop and abide by its rules. They would take the stronghold for their own, and keep it as a place to return to when they were not busy elsewhere. Then, instead of making enemies of the villagers or keeping them so terrified that they dared not refuse any request, let them make a friendly agreement. If the people who lived in these valleys gave them a certain tribute three or four times a year—a certain part of the crop, whatever it was—they would take care that there was no more plundering and kidnaping, and the farmers could attend to their own affairs in safety and comfort. If any enemy[pg 89]came against the people, too great for the Wolf and his soldiers to encounter successfully, the fighting men of the villages would be expected to help them, but they would undertake to keep the region clear of banditti. In return, if any one asked whether there was a band of outlaws hiding thereabouts, the villagers were to say that they did not know where there were any, and that would be the truth.The plan was approved, as the young chief knew it would be. He had talked it over beforehand with each man separately. If the people were ungrateful enough, after the den of thieves was broken up, not to agree to the plan proposed, they could take their chance with other thieves, but he thought that after what they had been through in the last few years they would be willing to agree to almost anything.As men are apt to do when they are much feared, the banditti in the rock-walled ravine were growing rather careless. The scouts of the Wolf’s troop were able to follow their movements closely. On the following night, when their destruction was to take place, the robbers were all in camp, having just returned from one of their expeditions to bring up supplies. The fat calf and the fowls and other provisions were sizzling and stewing over great fires. There was plenty[pg 90]of new wine. From a trader’s pack some of the younger men had got little ivory cubes with figures engraved on the sides, and were playing a game of chance. Their huts were furnished rather luxuriously, with fur robes, wool garments and gay hangings, but these, like their clothing, were stained and injured more or less by the fighting that usually took place over the plunder. The chief did not care what his men did in camp so long as they obeyed his orders. He did not wish them to do much thinking; he preferred to do all of that for them. He would have been surprised indeed if he had known that some of them did think and had almost made up their minds that they had had enough of him and of his methods and would go somewhere else.As he grew older, the robber captain was fonder of eating and drinking, and now he sat on a handsome ivory stool near the fire—for the night was chilly—waiting for the meat to be done to a turn. The cook was a stout, short, bright-eyed man, a slave from across the river, and there was very little that he did not know about preparing rich dishes.It was a windy night. The wind howled among the trees and down the ravine as if it were chasing something. It was like the howling of wolves, though there had been no wolves on that[pg 91]part of the mountain for a long time. Far to the right of the camp there was heard a noise like the cry of a child. Far to the left there was a bleating like a lamb. These were the signals arranged by the attacking force that was coming silently through the woods, and the sentinels went out a little way to see what a lamb and a child could be doing up here. They were knocked down, bound and carried off to a safe distance. By the time supper was ready in the ravine, the men in the woods were lying on the bank above, all around, looking down into the stronghold. The huts were ranged in two rows down the hollow, with a line of fires between and the fronts open. The entrance below was blocked by a log gate. But the men now ready to attack the place could climb like goats; they had all been brought up among the hills.All of a sudden arrows came shooting down on the careless banditti, and almost every one found its mark. Down to the roofs of the huts and to the ground came leaping figures, well armed and fighting with the strength and skill of trained men. Whenever they could they disarmed and bound their men, but the leader of the banditti was an exception to this rule. He was killed without a chance to surrender.When every man in the camp of the banditti[pg 92]had been cut down or captured—and about half of them surrendered,—the victors sat down and ate the feast prepared for the robbers.Next day, when things had been cleared up and put in order, each prisoner’s case was taken up separately. A few, whose deeds were the terror of the countryside, were executed. The rest were glad enough to join the troop under the Wolf, on probation. If they did well, they should be full members in time.The people of the villages were thankful to buy protection on the reasonable terms offered. They did not know exactly who these men were who had rid them of the banditti; some supposed they were a troop of soldiers from some chief. They almost never saw any of the band. The tax demanded was brought to a certain place and left there, and that was all. Emilius the priest often wondered why these men did not ask anything of his village, but they never did. Their village was the only one that had hardly ever suffered from the banditti. It was very odd. He never connected either of these facts with the long-ago visit of the shepherd youths and the tame wolf. So matters went on for a year or two. A guard was always left at the stronghold, but the men were often absent. Merchants and traders learned that they could get these men to[pg 93]protect them, at a price, when they were traveling through a strange country. They had really established a sort of patrol. The scattered hunters and fishermen had walked in desperate terror of the banditti, but they almost worshiped the troopers, and they would have died rather than reveal anything they had been told to keep secret. When Amulius, the hoary and evil chief of the people of the Long White Mountain, heard of these two youths who were such excellent fighters and whose men had so good a reputation, he tried to find out where they were, but he never could. For all the people of the country seemed to know, they might come out of the air and vanish into the clouds. It was very mysterious. When the young leader heard that Amulius had been trying to find him he smiled, and did not make any comment whatever.[pg 94]VIIITHE BEEHIVE TEMPLEThe preparations at the village on the Mountain of Fire were completed during the winter, and the little company of men, women and children made ready to go out into the unknown world as soon as a favorable day arrived. It was a more serious undertaking than any they had known or even heard of before. Even when their ancestors came to this place, so long ago that no one could remember when it was, it was after a lifetime of wandering; they were not used to anything else. This company was made up of people who had never in their lives been more than a day’s journey from the place where they were born, and what was more, hardly any of their forefathers had, for generations.It was made still more difficult and doubtful by the fact that they were taking their women and children with them. There was no other way. There was not too much to eat in the vil[pg 95]lage, as it was, and there would be less, if the men went away for a year and left their families to be supported. Although the men would have preferred to go first and explore the land, the women were privately better pleased as it was. They felt that if their husbands were to be killed they wanted to die too. As for the children who were old enough to understand the situation, their feelings were mixed. It was exciting and delightful to be going to see new lands, and made them feel important and responsible, but when the time of leaving actually approached and they began to think of never seeing their old home again, they felt very sober indeed.They left the mountain on the day that was later called the Ides of March, at the beginning of spring, and slowly they followed the shining river out into the valley. Two-wheeled carts drawn by the oxen were loaded with the stores and clothing they were able to take with them. The fighting men had their weapons all in order. The boys were helping drive the cattle and sheep, and the married women had the younger children with them. Every one who was able to walk, walked. The eldest girl in each of the families—none was over ten years old—had charge of one most important thing—the fire. The little maidens walked soberly together, feeling a[pg 96]great dignity laid upon them. Each carried a round, strong basket lined with clay and covered with a beehive-shaped lid of a peculiar shape. In this were live coals carefully covered with ashes, for the kindling of the next fire. No matter what happened, they must not let those coals go out.Illustration: The little maidens walked soberly together“What-everhappened?”repeated a little yellow-haired girl, called Flavia because she was so fair. She was the daughter of Muraena the smith, and the youngest of the ten.Ursula, the biggest girl, laughed.“If we were crossing a river and one of us got drowned,[pg 97]I suppose her fire would be lost,”she said teasingly.“But they wouldn’t excuse us for anything short of that.”“But if it did go out—if all of the fires were put out?”persisted Flavia, walking a little closer to Marcia, whose word she felt that she could trust. She had visions of a dreadful anger of the gods,—another night of darkness and terror like the one they all remembered.“Should we never have a fire again, and have to eat things raw, and freeze to death, and let the wolves eat us up?”“Certainly not,”answered Marcia reassuringly.“Father told me all about that when I was younger than you are. Don’t you remember how they kindled the fire in the new year?”Flavia shook her yellow head.“I never noticed.”She had been so taken up with the chanting and the ceremonies that she had not seen how the fire actually blazed up on the altar.“They do it with theterebraand thetabula. Thetabulais a flat wooden block with a groove cut in it, and theterebrais a rubbing-stick that just fits the groove. They have some very fine chaff ready, and they move the stick very fast in the groove until it is quite hot. Don’t you know how warm your hands are after you rub them together? When there is a little spark it[pg 98]catches in the chaff, and then it is sheltered to keep it from going out, and fed with more chaff and dry splinters until the fire is kindled. They canalwayskindle a fire in that way.”“What if theterebraand thetabulawere lost?”asked Flavia.“They would make others.”“If I rubbed my hands together long enough, would they be on fire?”asked the child. She did not yet see how fire could be made just by rubbing bits of wood together. In fact, it was so much easier to keep the fire when it was once made that this was hardly ever done. It was only done regularly once a year, at the beginning of the month sacred to Mars. Then all the altar fires were put out and the priest kindled the sacred fire in this way afresh.The girls all laughed, and Marcia answered,“No, dear, it is only certain kinds of wood that will do that. I suppose the gods taught our people long ago which they were. The hearth god lives in the fire, you know. I always think it is like a living thing that will die without care. Father says that the fire keeps away the wicked fever spirits.”“What’s fever?”asked Yaya, on the other side.“Did you ever have it?”“No, never; but Father did once, when he was[pg 99]working on the road across the marsh, before I was born. It makes all your bones ache as if they were broken, and you cannot keep still because the spirits shake you all over. You grow hot and grow cold, and have bad dreams, and talk nonsense. Father woke up one day when he had the fever, and said that there were great rats coming to carry off my brother Marcs, who was a baby then, and he tried to get up and kill the rats, when there were none there. And when he was well he never remembered seeing the rats at all.”Although the children did not know it, a blazing fire and wool clothing help to keep away the malarial fever of a wet wilderness. The people believed that their gods taught them to keep up a fire, to wear clean wool garments and to drink pure water, and it is certain that they were wise in doing all these things religiously, as they did. When they found a good spring on their journey they filled their water bottles and left a little gift there for the god of the waters. They kept near pure running water when they could, and away from standing water, even if they had to go a long way round to do it. In the sudden damps and chills of the lowlands through which they traveled the tunics and mantles of pure wool kept them from taking cold, and there[pg 100]was very little sickness on the journey. They kept to their own habits of eating, and the children were not allowed to experiment with strange and possibly unripe fruits.It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a miserable living as he could,—simply because the land was not fit to live in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing, stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they could not go without meeting strange people and the worship of strange and cruel gods.Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of coals was made ready for the next day’s[pg 101]journey. It was the duty of the ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire god. One or another was always there.One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes, Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant, pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer when they found some one’s back turned. They looked like the people of Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going on. The water was[pg 102]good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old chief who had died in a far land many years ago.This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them. They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that, they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all the way[pg 103]around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.Illustration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambsIn flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say, animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs[pg 104]in that way was picking her steps across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise—two noises—from a willow basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in. The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw, and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry side, and she licked them all over.A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down, looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big, strong body.The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to take the children away from her she would fight, and they might[pg 105]be hurt, and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help. Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a[pg 106]rocky stronghold on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way, some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two brothers came to the camp of the colonists.When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the patrol in the mountains.For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the colony to live!Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain. The wild face of Romulus changed and[pg 107]kindled as he talked, and Marcus Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his land and his people.The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after year, and their people find a home.[pg 108]IXTHE SQUARE HILLThe colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great deal of loss and trouble in the end.While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from them. The brush that was not needed[pg 109]for the fires was made into loose fagots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a trap.When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and called a sharpened stake a“palum.”A fence built of boards set up in this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The word fence itself is only a short word for“defence,”—a defence made of pointed stakes planted in the ground.The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of a low earthwork[pg 110]that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through high loopholes.There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.The gate was made as strong as possible, of smaller tree trunks lashed together, and strengthened on the inside by crosspieces. When it was closed, two logs, one at the top and one at the bottom, were laid in place across it. Some one was always there to guard it, day and night, and[pg 111]could see through a little window who was coming up the hill.Although strongholds like this had not been necessary for many years in their old home, there was one, built of stone in the ancient days, and never allowed to go to ruin. It seemed very adventurous to the boys to be erecting defences like that for their own families. But Romulus and Remus had told them that this would be the only way of being quite safe. They had a great deal that petty thieves might want to steal; and the chief Amulius might take it into his head to send a force to attack them, if he knew that so large a party of strangers had come in. When they had been there some years, and more people had joined the colony, the seven hills could be fortified so that nobody could take them. Colonus himself could see that, and it gave him a feeling of confidence and respect for his young cousin to know that he had seen it too.By the time the palisade was finished, not only most of the land within it was clear, but the material for the huts was ready and some huts had been built. The timber was piled as it was cut, by the boys of the various families, on the lots marked out for the houses. The younger children cut reeds and grass for thatching and for the fodder of the cattle. They did this work[pg 112]in little companies and had a very pleasant time. Sometimes they caught fish, or shot waterfowl with their bows and arrows, or set snares for game.Later the men would gather stone for a stone wall in place of the palisade, to run along the same line, and then the seasoned timbers of their log wall would still be good for building purposes. There was a steeper and narrower hill near the river which would make an excellent fortress. But the thoughts of the colony now were given to laying out farms.They cleared and laid out wheat fields and orchards and vineyards as soon as they found land suitable. As any farmer knows, the sooner land is cultivated the more can be got out of it; it is not work that can all be done in a year, or two years, or three. This is especially true of land never used before for anything but pasture, and much of this had never been used even for that. Sheep do not like wet ground, and both sheep and cattle, unless they were tended constantly, might stray into the swampy low grounds. Drainage would help that land; when some of it was drained it would make rich lush meadows and golden grain fields. The land-loving Vitali could see visions of richer crops than any they had ever harvested, growing on that[pg 113]unpromising plain, if only they could have their way with it.The children who were here, there and everywhere, watching all that was done and helping where they could, felt as if they were looking on at the making of a new world. It was really almost like a miracle—some of the ignorant marsh folk thought it was one—when that uncultivated hilltop, overgrown with bushes and wind-stunted trees and with the rocky bones of it cropping out here and there, became a trim encampment of orderly thatched huts. The beasts grew sleek and fat on the good fodder and grazing, and no one had appeared so far who had any evil designs. In fact, few persons came near them at all. It was as if they had the new world all to themselves.In the house-building the children helped considerably after the men got the timber frames up. Instead of building stone walls, they were going to do what they had sometimes done before when a wall was run up temporarily,—use mud. They set stakes in rows along the walls, not close together like the palisade, but far enough apart for twigs and branches to be woven in and out between them like a very rough basketry. When this was done the men built a kind of pen on the ground, for a mixing bowl, and brought lime[pg 114]and sand and clay and water, and mixed it with tough grass into a sort of rough plaster. This was daubed all over the walls with wooden spades until the whole was quite covered, and when it hardened it would be weather-proof and warm. Small houses built in this“wattle and daub”fashion have been known to last hundreds of years.The thatched roof was four-sided, running up to a hole in the middle to let out the smoke. When it rained, the rain dripped in around the edges of the hole and ran into a tank under it. The altar with the sacred fire was at one side of this tank, and when the room was dark the flame was reflected in the wavering, shining depths of the water. The space opposite the door, beyond the altar, was where the father and mother slept, and later it might be walled off into a private room. Other rooms could be partitioned off along the sides. In later times there was a small entry or vestibule between the door and the inner rooms. But although the other rooms might vary in number and size and use, theatrium, the middle space, in which were the altar and theimpluviumor water pool, remained the same. It was the heart of the home. Here the family worship was held, and this was the common room of the family.[pg 115]The plan of the encampment itself was like the house on a larger scale. The huts were built around the inside of the palisade, with a separating space or belt of land that was never plowed or built on—thepomerium, the space“before the wall.”In the middle was an open square which was to the town what theatriumwas to the house,—the common ground, where public worship was held, announcements made, and public affairs social or religious carried on. Here was the beehive hut with the sacred fire, and all other temples or public buildings there might be would open on this square. The line of encircling houses made a sort of inner defense line, and even if any stranger could have climbed the wall for purposes of robbery or spying, it would have been hard for him to pass the houses without being found out.This was the ancient way in which all the towns of this race were built. As the towns increased in size, other gates were opened, and streets laid out, but always after the same general plan. And as a family never stayed indoors when it was possible to work or play in the open air, so the colonists did not stay inside their wall when they could go out on the common land and make it fruitful. Their descendants are seldom contented to live inside walls and streets, where they[pg 116]can have no land of their own. They find homes outside, where they can have land to dig up and plant and tend and watch, season after season,—and in the thousands of years since they began to plant and to reap, they have gone almost everywhere in the world.

[pg 81]VIIMASTERLESS MENThe story the robbers had to tell, when they returned to their captain, was not a very likely one. It was so unlikely that they took time to talk the matter over thoroughly before attempting to face him. Perhaps it would be better to tell a lie, if they could concoct one that would do. The trouble was that they could not think of any explanation for their failure, that was likely to satisfy him any better than the plain facts.Of course it seemed impossible that a man and a wolf should be traveling peaceably in company,—to say nothing of taking a child out of the hands of several strong and reckless men. But even so, where had they gone? One of the men had been quick enough to thrust with his spear at the wolf as he got it against the sky,—and it went through nothing. He forgot that the motion of an animal is usually quicker than the human eye, on such occasions. Moreover, though two of them went back down the path until they[pg 82]could hear the voices of the villagers, there was no sign of man, wolf or child. The conclusion they felt to be the only one possible was that the villagers’ gods had come and taken the child away from them, in the form of the wolf and the man. In that case they must be very powerful, so powerful that it would not be safe to attempt anything against that village in the future.Gubbo, who came from that village, assured them that its gods were powerful indeed. He had not, when he and the other man were watching it, seen anything like this man and wolf apparition, and it was certainly remarkable enough to attract attention. Neither had the country people ever mentioned such a thing. Privately, Gubbo did not believe much in gods, but he was afraid of them for all that, because he was not sure. Gubbo’s father had impressed upon him very hard that if he did wrong, bad luck would surely overtake him. The patience of the gods was great, but they knew everything, and in the end no man could escape them. Gubbo, wincing at the pain where the wolf’s teeth had caught him, was uncomfortably wondering whether his bad luck had begun. There had never been any other failure to kidnap somebody, when men were sent to do it. Perhaps the bad luck in this case came from the fact that one of the party was attacking[pg 83]his own relatives and friends. There would be more bad luck when the chief of the bandits heard of this thing. Gubbo decided to dodge any further trouble if he could, and he lagged behind and quietly slipped away, to find some other way of making a living. He intended to go on traveling for a long time, to be out of the way of his former comrades.It was just as well for him that he did this, for the men who returned to the den in the rocks and reported to the chief had a very bad time of it. The leader was executed, and so was the man who had had charge of the child. Of the other three, one died of the bite of the wolf and the others were very ill. After that, not a man of them could have been induced to join in an attack against that village. The chief wisely did not press the matter. After all, that was the nearest village of all those in their range, and it might not be altogether prudent to arouse the anger of the fighting men. It might lead to discovery.The Cub, as he made his way back to the hut of Faustulus, was doing a great deal of thinking. When he was younger he had sometimes dreamed of being captain of a band of outlaws, because that seemed the only chance to be captain of anything, for a fatherless boy. But he had no taste[pg 84]for kidnaping children or being a nuisance to peaceable and kindly people. Merely to think of those scoundrels made him hot all over. He would have liked to follow their trail up to their very den, for he had an idea that he knew where it was. One day, when he and Pincho had been hunting together, he had seen a place where men evidently lived, and lived without any sort of peaceful farming or other business. If that were the den of the banditti, they could easily make themselves the pest of the countryside, and what they had done would be nothing to what they could do. Although he did not himself know it, this boy was the kind of person whose mind leaps ahead and sees possibilities for others as well as himself,—evil as well as good.One day he asked his brother how he would like to gather the masterless men of all that neighborhood into a band of soldiery, to live by hunting and by fighting for any chief who would give them their living. They were growing too old to live much longer as they had lived. Perhaps if they could gather followers enough, they could go somewhere after awhile and make a place for themselves. First they might go to the Long White Mountain, where there was a rather large town, and see what the prospect was for such an undertaking. They had already[pg 85]taken part in one campaign, with some of the boys of the neighborhood, under the names of the Wolf and the Piper. All of the troop had some nickname or other. There was the Ram, whose head would crack an ordinary board in two; the Snake, who could wriggle out of any bonds ever tied—they had tried him time and again; Big Foot, Flop-Ear, Long Arm, and some others. They found the captain they had followed before glad to use them again and give them ordinary soldier rations. On the second night of their life in camp, a broad-shouldered and slightly bow-legged individual came and asked to see the head of the band. Gubbo did not recognize the young leader, but the latter knew him the moment he saw him. Gubbo explained that he had been a member of a company of banditti, had become disgusted with their ways, and left them. He would like to make an honest living.“What can you do?”asked the youth consideringly.Gubbo said that he could teach tricks in knife work to almost any man; also he could wrestle.“Try me,”said the Wolf, slipping out of his heavy tunic. He enjoyed the rough-and-tumble that followed more than he had anything since he used to play with his wolf. This man really[pg 86]was a fair match for him. Gubbo was taken into the band.“He is a brute,”said the Ram bluntly.“He is,”said the leader.“But he can teach you fellows something.”They learned a great deal from the villainous-looking newcomer, though if he had not been a little afraid of the young head of the troop, they might have paid a heavy price for their learning. The latter found out by judicious questioning that the den was where he had supposed it was. After a time he began to see that Gubbo was doing his men no good. The man was cruel, treacherous and base. Two or three times he had played tricks which others were blamed for. One day Gubbo heard that a merchant was coming along the road to the mountain villages, and at the same time he was sent on scout duty that way. He watched in the bushes until the man came along slowly, muffled in a long mantle, with a donkey loaded with panniers. He seemed to be old; his beard was white. Gubbo sprang on him; the man turned in that instant and met him with a knife thrust. Then the Wolf straightened up, dropped his white goat’s-hair beard and wig, and went back to camp. The bad luck that Gubbo feared had got him at last, and nobody mourned him at all.[pg 87]Wolf and the Piper and their troop spent some seasons in fighting and adventure, and then they disappeared. It was said that they had separated.This was true, but they had separated for a purpose. If the company went together to the lair of the banditti they might as well go blowing trumpets and beating drums; it would be known long before they came near. Their orders were to go by twos and threes, and when the moon was full to meet near a certain great rock that overlooked the valley where the river became a lake and then went on. One by one, as the young leader sat watching on this rock, dark forms came slipping through the shadows and joined him. Last of all came his brother, who had guided some of the party by a very roundabout way.When all were there, and sentinels posted, he unfolded his plan. Above the place where they now sat, among the tumbled rocks of a narrow valley, was the headquarters of a most pestiferous company of robbers. For years they had terrified and despoiled the people of the villages, and if any resisted they were tormented almost beyond endurance in many different ways. The people were expected to turn over to them at certain times and places practically everything they produced, except just enough for a bare living.[pg 88]Whatever the banditti did not use themselves, they sold for things that could not be got in the villages. The villagers never knew what they were to be allowed to have at the end of the year, and often they suffered for food and warm clothing; but they stayed there because they knew nowhere else to go. It was a miserable state of things.His plan was this. They were to steal upon this den of banditti and take it by surprise. Gubbo had said that it was not fortified to any extent, because the chief relied on the locality not being known. They were to kill the chief and such men as could not be trusted to behave themselves if they had a chance. Perhaps some would join the troop and abide by its rules. They would take the stronghold for their own, and keep it as a place to return to when they were not busy elsewhere. Then, instead of making enemies of the villagers or keeping them so terrified that they dared not refuse any request, let them make a friendly agreement. If the people who lived in these valleys gave them a certain tribute three or four times a year—a certain part of the crop, whatever it was—they would take care that there was no more plundering and kidnaping, and the farmers could attend to their own affairs in safety and comfort. If any enemy[pg 89]came against the people, too great for the Wolf and his soldiers to encounter successfully, the fighting men of the villages would be expected to help them, but they would undertake to keep the region clear of banditti. In return, if any one asked whether there was a band of outlaws hiding thereabouts, the villagers were to say that they did not know where there were any, and that would be the truth.The plan was approved, as the young chief knew it would be. He had talked it over beforehand with each man separately. If the people were ungrateful enough, after the den of thieves was broken up, not to agree to the plan proposed, they could take their chance with other thieves, but he thought that after what they had been through in the last few years they would be willing to agree to almost anything.As men are apt to do when they are much feared, the banditti in the rock-walled ravine were growing rather careless. The scouts of the Wolf’s troop were able to follow their movements closely. On the following night, when their destruction was to take place, the robbers were all in camp, having just returned from one of their expeditions to bring up supplies. The fat calf and the fowls and other provisions were sizzling and stewing over great fires. There was plenty[pg 90]of new wine. From a trader’s pack some of the younger men had got little ivory cubes with figures engraved on the sides, and were playing a game of chance. Their huts were furnished rather luxuriously, with fur robes, wool garments and gay hangings, but these, like their clothing, were stained and injured more or less by the fighting that usually took place over the plunder. The chief did not care what his men did in camp so long as they obeyed his orders. He did not wish them to do much thinking; he preferred to do all of that for them. He would have been surprised indeed if he had known that some of them did think and had almost made up their minds that they had had enough of him and of his methods and would go somewhere else.As he grew older, the robber captain was fonder of eating and drinking, and now he sat on a handsome ivory stool near the fire—for the night was chilly—waiting for the meat to be done to a turn. The cook was a stout, short, bright-eyed man, a slave from across the river, and there was very little that he did not know about preparing rich dishes.It was a windy night. The wind howled among the trees and down the ravine as if it were chasing something. It was like the howling of wolves, though there had been no wolves on that[pg 91]part of the mountain for a long time. Far to the right of the camp there was heard a noise like the cry of a child. Far to the left there was a bleating like a lamb. These were the signals arranged by the attacking force that was coming silently through the woods, and the sentinels went out a little way to see what a lamb and a child could be doing up here. They were knocked down, bound and carried off to a safe distance. By the time supper was ready in the ravine, the men in the woods were lying on the bank above, all around, looking down into the stronghold. The huts were ranged in two rows down the hollow, with a line of fires between and the fronts open. The entrance below was blocked by a log gate. But the men now ready to attack the place could climb like goats; they had all been brought up among the hills.All of a sudden arrows came shooting down on the careless banditti, and almost every one found its mark. Down to the roofs of the huts and to the ground came leaping figures, well armed and fighting with the strength and skill of trained men. Whenever they could they disarmed and bound their men, but the leader of the banditti was an exception to this rule. He was killed without a chance to surrender.When every man in the camp of the banditti[pg 92]had been cut down or captured—and about half of them surrendered,—the victors sat down and ate the feast prepared for the robbers.Next day, when things had been cleared up and put in order, each prisoner’s case was taken up separately. A few, whose deeds were the terror of the countryside, were executed. The rest were glad enough to join the troop under the Wolf, on probation. If they did well, they should be full members in time.The people of the villages were thankful to buy protection on the reasonable terms offered. They did not know exactly who these men were who had rid them of the banditti; some supposed they were a troop of soldiers from some chief. They almost never saw any of the band. The tax demanded was brought to a certain place and left there, and that was all. Emilius the priest often wondered why these men did not ask anything of his village, but they never did. Their village was the only one that had hardly ever suffered from the banditti. It was very odd. He never connected either of these facts with the long-ago visit of the shepherd youths and the tame wolf. So matters went on for a year or two. A guard was always left at the stronghold, but the men were often absent. Merchants and traders learned that they could get these men to[pg 93]protect them, at a price, when they were traveling through a strange country. They had really established a sort of patrol. The scattered hunters and fishermen had walked in desperate terror of the banditti, but they almost worshiped the troopers, and they would have died rather than reveal anything they had been told to keep secret. When Amulius, the hoary and evil chief of the people of the Long White Mountain, heard of these two youths who were such excellent fighters and whose men had so good a reputation, he tried to find out where they were, but he never could. For all the people of the country seemed to know, they might come out of the air and vanish into the clouds. It was very mysterious. When the young leader heard that Amulius had been trying to find him he smiled, and did not make any comment whatever.[pg 94]VIIITHE BEEHIVE TEMPLEThe preparations at the village on the Mountain of Fire were completed during the winter, and the little company of men, women and children made ready to go out into the unknown world as soon as a favorable day arrived. It was a more serious undertaking than any they had known or even heard of before. Even when their ancestors came to this place, so long ago that no one could remember when it was, it was after a lifetime of wandering; they were not used to anything else. This company was made up of people who had never in their lives been more than a day’s journey from the place where they were born, and what was more, hardly any of their forefathers had, for generations.It was made still more difficult and doubtful by the fact that they were taking their women and children with them. There was no other way. There was not too much to eat in the vil[pg 95]lage, as it was, and there would be less, if the men went away for a year and left their families to be supported. Although the men would have preferred to go first and explore the land, the women were privately better pleased as it was. They felt that if their husbands were to be killed they wanted to die too. As for the children who were old enough to understand the situation, their feelings were mixed. It was exciting and delightful to be going to see new lands, and made them feel important and responsible, but when the time of leaving actually approached and they began to think of never seeing their old home again, they felt very sober indeed.They left the mountain on the day that was later called the Ides of March, at the beginning of spring, and slowly they followed the shining river out into the valley. Two-wheeled carts drawn by the oxen were loaded with the stores and clothing they were able to take with them. The fighting men had their weapons all in order. The boys were helping drive the cattle and sheep, and the married women had the younger children with them. Every one who was able to walk, walked. The eldest girl in each of the families—none was over ten years old—had charge of one most important thing—the fire. The little maidens walked soberly together, feeling a[pg 96]great dignity laid upon them. Each carried a round, strong basket lined with clay and covered with a beehive-shaped lid of a peculiar shape. In this were live coals carefully covered with ashes, for the kindling of the next fire. No matter what happened, they must not let those coals go out.Illustration: The little maidens walked soberly together“What-everhappened?”repeated a little yellow-haired girl, called Flavia because she was so fair. She was the daughter of Muraena the smith, and the youngest of the ten.Ursula, the biggest girl, laughed.“If we were crossing a river and one of us got drowned,[pg 97]I suppose her fire would be lost,”she said teasingly.“But they wouldn’t excuse us for anything short of that.”“But if it did go out—if all of the fires were put out?”persisted Flavia, walking a little closer to Marcia, whose word she felt that she could trust. She had visions of a dreadful anger of the gods,—another night of darkness and terror like the one they all remembered.“Should we never have a fire again, and have to eat things raw, and freeze to death, and let the wolves eat us up?”“Certainly not,”answered Marcia reassuringly.“Father told me all about that when I was younger than you are. Don’t you remember how they kindled the fire in the new year?”Flavia shook her yellow head.“I never noticed.”She had been so taken up with the chanting and the ceremonies that she had not seen how the fire actually blazed up on the altar.“They do it with theterebraand thetabula. Thetabulais a flat wooden block with a groove cut in it, and theterebrais a rubbing-stick that just fits the groove. They have some very fine chaff ready, and they move the stick very fast in the groove until it is quite hot. Don’t you know how warm your hands are after you rub them together? When there is a little spark it[pg 98]catches in the chaff, and then it is sheltered to keep it from going out, and fed with more chaff and dry splinters until the fire is kindled. They canalwayskindle a fire in that way.”“What if theterebraand thetabulawere lost?”asked Flavia.“They would make others.”“If I rubbed my hands together long enough, would they be on fire?”asked the child. She did not yet see how fire could be made just by rubbing bits of wood together. In fact, it was so much easier to keep the fire when it was once made that this was hardly ever done. It was only done regularly once a year, at the beginning of the month sacred to Mars. Then all the altar fires were put out and the priest kindled the sacred fire in this way afresh.The girls all laughed, and Marcia answered,“No, dear, it is only certain kinds of wood that will do that. I suppose the gods taught our people long ago which they were. The hearth god lives in the fire, you know. I always think it is like a living thing that will die without care. Father says that the fire keeps away the wicked fever spirits.”“What’s fever?”asked Yaya, on the other side.“Did you ever have it?”“No, never; but Father did once, when he was[pg 99]working on the road across the marsh, before I was born. It makes all your bones ache as if they were broken, and you cannot keep still because the spirits shake you all over. You grow hot and grow cold, and have bad dreams, and talk nonsense. Father woke up one day when he had the fever, and said that there were great rats coming to carry off my brother Marcs, who was a baby then, and he tried to get up and kill the rats, when there were none there. And when he was well he never remembered seeing the rats at all.”Although the children did not know it, a blazing fire and wool clothing help to keep away the malarial fever of a wet wilderness. The people believed that their gods taught them to keep up a fire, to wear clean wool garments and to drink pure water, and it is certain that they were wise in doing all these things religiously, as they did. When they found a good spring on their journey they filled their water bottles and left a little gift there for the god of the waters. They kept near pure running water when they could, and away from standing water, even if they had to go a long way round to do it. In the sudden damps and chills of the lowlands through which they traveled the tunics and mantles of pure wool kept them from taking cold, and there[pg 100]was very little sickness on the journey. They kept to their own habits of eating, and the children were not allowed to experiment with strange and possibly unripe fruits.It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a miserable living as he could,—simply because the land was not fit to live in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing, stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they could not go without meeting strange people and the worship of strange and cruel gods.Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of coals was made ready for the next day’s[pg 101]journey. It was the duty of the ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire god. One or another was always there.One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes, Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant, pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer when they found some one’s back turned. They looked like the people of Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going on. The water was[pg 102]good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old chief who had died in a far land many years ago.This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them. They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that, they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all the way[pg 103]around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.Illustration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambsIn flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say, animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs[pg 104]in that way was picking her steps across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise—two noises—from a willow basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in. The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw, and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry side, and she licked them all over.A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down, looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big, strong body.The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to take the children away from her she would fight, and they might[pg 105]be hurt, and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help. Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a[pg 106]rocky stronghold on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way, some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two brothers came to the camp of the colonists.When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the patrol in the mountains.For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the colony to live!Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain. The wild face of Romulus changed and[pg 107]kindled as he talked, and Marcus Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his land and his people.The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after year, and their people find a home.[pg 108]IXTHE SQUARE HILLThe colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great deal of loss and trouble in the end.While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from them. The brush that was not needed[pg 109]for the fires was made into loose fagots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a trap.When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and called a sharpened stake a“palum.”A fence built of boards set up in this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The word fence itself is only a short word for“defence,”—a defence made of pointed stakes planted in the ground.The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of a low earthwork[pg 110]that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through high loopholes.There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.The gate was made as strong as possible, of smaller tree trunks lashed together, and strengthened on the inside by crosspieces. When it was closed, two logs, one at the top and one at the bottom, were laid in place across it. Some one was always there to guard it, day and night, and[pg 111]could see through a little window who was coming up the hill.Although strongholds like this had not been necessary for many years in their old home, there was one, built of stone in the ancient days, and never allowed to go to ruin. It seemed very adventurous to the boys to be erecting defences like that for their own families. But Romulus and Remus had told them that this would be the only way of being quite safe. They had a great deal that petty thieves might want to steal; and the chief Amulius might take it into his head to send a force to attack them, if he knew that so large a party of strangers had come in. When they had been there some years, and more people had joined the colony, the seven hills could be fortified so that nobody could take them. Colonus himself could see that, and it gave him a feeling of confidence and respect for his young cousin to know that he had seen it too.By the time the palisade was finished, not only most of the land within it was clear, but the material for the huts was ready and some huts had been built. The timber was piled as it was cut, by the boys of the various families, on the lots marked out for the houses. The younger children cut reeds and grass for thatching and for the fodder of the cattle. They did this work[pg 112]in little companies and had a very pleasant time. Sometimes they caught fish, or shot waterfowl with their bows and arrows, or set snares for game.Later the men would gather stone for a stone wall in place of the palisade, to run along the same line, and then the seasoned timbers of their log wall would still be good for building purposes. There was a steeper and narrower hill near the river which would make an excellent fortress. But the thoughts of the colony now were given to laying out farms.They cleared and laid out wheat fields and orchards and vineyards as soon as they found land suitable. As any farmer knows, the sooner land is cultivated the more can be got out of it; it is not work that can all be done in a year, or two years, or three. This is especially true of land never used before for anything but pasture, and much of this had never been used even for that. Sheep do not like wet ground, and both sheep and cattle, unless they were tended constantly, might stray into the swampy low grounds. Drainage would help that land; when some of it was drained it would make rich lush meadows and golden grain fields. The land-loving Vitali could see visions of richer crops than any they had ever harvested, growing on that[pg 113]unpromising plain, if only they could have their way with it.The children who were here, there and everywhere, watching all that was done and helping where they could, felt as if they were looking on at the making of a new world. It was really almost like a miracle—some of the ignorant marsh folk thought it was one—when that uncultivated hilltop, overgrown with bushes and wind-stunted trees and with the rocky bones of it cropping out here and there, became a trim encampment of orderly thatched huts. The beasts grew sleek and fat on the good fodder and grazing, and no one had appeared so far who had any evil designs. In fact, few persons came near them at all. It was as if they had the new world all to themselves.In the house-building the children helped considerably after the men got the timber frames up. Instead of building stone walls, they were going to do what they had sometimes done before when a wall was run up temporarily,—use mud. They set stakes in rows along the walls, not close together like the palisade, but far enough apart for twigs and branches to be woven in and out between them like a very rough basketry. When this was done the men built a kind of pen on the ground, for a mixing bowl, and brought lime[pg 114]and sand and clay and water, and mixed it with tough grass into a sort of rough plaster. This was daubed all over the walls with wooden spades until the whole was quite covered, and when it hardened it would be weather-proof and warm. Small houses built in this“wattle and daub”fashion have been known to last hundreds of years.The thatched roof was four-sided, running up to a hole in the middle to let out the smoke. When it rained, the rain dripped in around the edges of the hole and ran into a tank under it. The altar with the sacred fire was at one side of this tank, and when the room was dark the flame was reflected in the wavering, shining depths of the water. The space opposite the door, beyond the altar, was where the father and mother slept, and later it might be walled off into a private room. Other rooms could be partitioned off along the sides. In later times there was a small entry or vestibule between the door and the inner rooms. But although the other rooms might vary in number and size and use, theatrium, the middle space, in which were the altar and theimpluviumor water pool, remained the same. It was the heart of the home. Here the family worship was held, and this was the common room of the family.[pg 115]The plan of the encampment itself was like the house on a larger scale. The huts were built around the inside of the palisade, with a separating space or belt of land that was never plowed or built on—thepomerium, the space“before the wall.”In the middle was an open square which was to the town what theatriumwas to the house,—the common ground, where public worship was held, announcements made, and public affairs social or religious carried on. Here was the beehive hut with the sacred fire, and all other temples or public buildings there might be would open on this square. The line of encircling houses made a sort of inner defense line, and even if any stranger could have climbed the wall for purposes of robbery or spying, it would have been hard for him to pass the houses without being found out.This was the ancient way in which all the towns of this race were built. As the towns increased in size, other gates were opened, and streets laid out, but always after the same general plan. And as a family never stayed indoors when it was possible to work or play in the open air, so the colonists did not stay inside their wall when they could go out on the common land and make it fruitful. Their descendants are seldom contented to live inside walls and streets, where they[pg 116]can have no land of their own. They find homes outside, where they can have land to dig up and plant and tend and watch, season after season,—and in the thousands of years since they began to plant and to reap, they have gone almost everywhere in the world.

[pg 81]VIIMASTERLESS MENThe story the robbers had to tell, when they returned to their captain, was not a very likely one. It was so unlikely that they took time to talk the matter over thoroughly before attempting to face him. Perhaps it would be better to tell a lie, if they could concoct one that would do. The trouble was that they could not think of any explanation for their failure, that was likely to satisfy him any better than the plain facts.Of course it seemed impossible that a man and a wolf should be traveling peaceably in company,—to say nothing of taking a child out of the hands of several strong and reckless men. But even so, where had they gone? One of the men had been quick enough to thrust with his spear at the wolf as he got it against the sky,—and it went through nothing. He forgot that the motion of an animal is usually quicker than the human eye, on such occasions. Moreover, though two of them went back down the path until they[pg 82]could hear the voices of the villagers, there was no sign of man, wolf or child. The conclusion they felt to be the only one possible was that the villagers’ gods had come and taken the child away from them, in the form of the wolf and the man. In that case they must be very powerful, so powerful that it would not be safe to attempt anything against that village in the future.Gubbo, who came from that village, assured them that its gods were powerful indeed. He had not, when he and the other man were watching it, seen anything like this man and wolf apparition, and it was certainly remarkable enough to attract attention. Neither had the country people ever mentioned such a thing. Privately, Gubbo did not believe much in gods, but he was afraid of them for all that, because he was not sure. Gubbo’s father had impressed upon him very hard that if he did wrong, bad luck would surely overtake him. The patience of the gods was great, but they knew everything, and in the end no man could escape them. Gubbo, wincing at the pain where the wolf’s teeth had caught him, was uncomfortably wondering whether his bad luck had begun. There had never been any other failure to kidnap somebody, when men were sent to do it. Perhaps the bad luck in this case came from the fact that one of the party was attacking[pg 83]his own relatives and friends. There would be more bad luck when the chief of the bandits heard of this thing. Gubbo decided to dodge any further trouble if he could, and he lagged behind and quietly slipped away, to find some other way of making a living. He intended to go on traveling for a long time, to be out of the way of his former comrades.It was just as well for him that he did this, for the men who returned to the den in the rocks and reported to the chief had a very bad time of it. The leader was executed, and so was the man who had had charge of the child. Of the other three, one died of the bite of the wolf and the others were very ill. After that, not a man of them could have been induced to join in an attack against that village. The chief wisely did not press the matter. After all, that was the nearest village of all those in their range, and it might not be altogether prudent to arouse the anger of the fighting men. It might lead to discovery.The Cub, as he made his way back to the hut of Faustulus, was doing a great deal of thinking. When he was younger he had sometimes dreamed of being captain of a band of outlaws, because that seemed the only chance to be captain of anything, for a fatherless boy. But he had no taste[pg 84]for kidnaping children or being a nuisance to peaceable and kindly people. Merely to think of those scoundrels made him hot all over. He would have liked to follow their trail up to their very den, for he had an idea that he knew where it was. One day, when he and Pincho had been hunting together, he had seen a place where men evidently lived, and lived without any sort of peaceful farming or other business. If that were the den of the banditti, they could easily make themselves the pest of the countryside, and what they had done would be nothing to what they could do. Although he did not himself know it, this boy was the kind of person whose mind leaps ahead and sees possibilities for others as well as himself,—evil as well as good.One day he asked his brother how he would like to gather the masterless men of all that neighborhood into a band of soldiery, to live by hunting and by fighting for any chief who would give them their living. They were growing too old to live much longer as they had lived. Perhaps if they could gather followers enough, they could go somewhere after awhile and make a place for themselves. First they might go to the Long White Mountain, where there was a rather large town, and see what the prospect was for such an undertaking. They had already[pg 85]taken part in one campaign, with some of the boys of the neighborhood, under the names of the Wolf and the Piper. All of the troop had some nickname or other. There was the Ram, whose head would crack an ordinary board in two; the Snake, who could wriggle out of any bonds ever tied—they had tried him time and again; Big Foot, Flop-Ear, Long Arm, and some others. They found the captain they had followed before glad to use them again and give them ordinary soldier rations. On the second night of their life in camp, a broad-shouldered and slightly bow-legged individual came and asked to see the head of the band. Gubbo did not recognize the young leader, but the latter knew him the moment he saw him. Gubbo explained that he had been a member of a company of banditti, had become disgusted with their ways, and left them. He would like to make an honest living.“What can you do?”asked the youth consideringly.Gubbo said that he could teach tricks in knife work to almost any man; also he could wrestle.“Try me,”said the Wolf, slipping out of his heavy tunic. He enjoyed the rough-and-tumble that followed more than he had anything since he used to play with his wolf. This man really[pg 86]was a fair match for him. Gubbo was taken into the band.“He is a brute,”said the Ram bluntly.“He is,”said the leader.“But he can teach you fellows something.”They learned a great deal from the villainous-looking newcomer, though if he had not been a little afraid of the young head of the troop, they might have paid a heavy price for their learning. The latter found out by judicious questioning that the den was where he had supposed it was. After a time he began to see that Gubbo was doing his men no good. The man was cruel, treacherous and base. Two or three times he had played tricks which others were blamed for. One day Gubbo heard that a merchant was coming along the road to the mountain villages, and at the same time he was sent on scout duty that way. He watched in the bushes until the man came along slowly, muffled in a long mantle, with a donkey loaded with panniers. He seemed to be old; his beard was white. Gubbo sprang on him; the man turned in that instant and met him with a knife thrust. Then the Wolf straightened up, dropped his white goat’s-hair beard and wig, and went back to camp. The bad luck that Gubbo feared had got him at last, and nobody mourned him at all.[pg 87]Wolf and the Piper and their troop spent some seasons in fighting and adventure, and then they disappeared. It was said that they had separated.This was true, but they had separated for a purpose. If the company went together to the lair of the banditti they might as well go blowing trumpets and beating drums; it would be known long before they came near. Their orders were to go by twos and threes, and when the moon was full to meet near a certain great rock that overlooked the valley where the river became a lake and then went on. One by one, as the young leader sat watching on this rock, dark forms came slipping through the shadows and joined him. Last of all came his brother, who had guided some of the party by a very roundabout way.When all were there, and sentinels posted, he unfolded his plan. Above the place where they now sat, among the tumbled rocks of a narrow valley, was the headquarters of a most pestiferous company of robbers. For years they had terrified and despoiled the people of the villages, and if any resisted they were tormented almost beyond endurance in many different ways. The people were expected to turn over to them at certain times and places practically everything they produced, except just enough for a bare living.[pg 88]Whatever the banditti did not use themselves, they sold for things that could not be got in the villages. The villagers never knew what they were to be allowed to have at the end of the year, and often they suffered for food and warm clothing; but they stayed there because they knew nowhere else to go. It was a miserable state of things.His plan was this. They were to steal upon this den of banditti and take it by surprise. Gubbo had said that it was not fortified to any extent, because the chief relied on the locality not being known. They were to kill the chief and such men as could not be trusted to behave themselves if they had a chance. Perhaps some would join the troop and abide by its rules. They would take the stronghold for their own, and keep it as a place to return to when they were not busy elsewhere. Then, instead of making enemies of the villagers or keeping them so terrified that they dared not refuse any request, let them make a friendly agreement. If the people who lived in these valleys gave them a certain tribute three or four times a year—a certain part of the crop, whatever it was—they would take care that there was no more plundering and kidnaping, and the farmers could attend to their own affairs in safety and comfort. If any enemy[pg 89]came against the people, too great for the Wolf and his soldiers to encounter successfully, the fighting men of the villages would be expected to help them, but they would undertake to keep the region clear of banditti. In return, if any one asked whether there was a band of outlaws hiding thereabouts, the villagers were to say that they did not know where there were any, and that would be the truth.The plan was approved, as the young chief knew it would be. He had talked it over beforehand with each man separately. If the people were ungrateful enough, after the den of thieves was broken up, not to agree to the plan proposed, they could take their chance with other thieves, but he thought that after what they had been through in the last few years they would be willing to agree to almost anything.As men are apt to do when they are much feared, the banditti in the rock-walled ravine were growing rather careless. The scouts of the Wolf’s troop were able to follow their movements closely. On the following night, when their destruction was to take place, the robbers were all in camp, having just returned from one of their expeditions to bring up supplies. The fat calf and the fowls and other provisions were sizzling and stewing over great fires. There was plenty[pg 90]of new wine. From a trader’s pack some of the younger men had got little ivory cubes with figures engraved on the sides, and were playing a game of chance. Their huts were furnished rather luxuriously, with fur robes, wool garments and gay hangings, but these, like their clothing, were stained and injured more or less by the fighting that usually took place over the plunder. The chief did not care what his men did in camp so long as they obeyed his orders. He did not wish them to do much thinking; he preferred to do all of that for them. He would have been surprised indeed if he had known that some of them did think and had almost made up their minds that they had had enough of him and of his methods and would go somewhere else.As he grew older, the robber captain was fonder of eating and drinking, and now he sat on a handsome ivory stool near the fire—for the night was chilly—waiting for the meat to be done to a turn. The cook was a stout, short, bright-eyed man, a slave from across the river, and there was very little that he did not know about preparing rich dishes.It was a windy night. The wind howled among the trees and down the ravine as if it were chasing something. It was like the howling of wolves, though there had been no wolves on that[pg 91]part of the mountain for a long time. Far to the right of the camp there was heard a noise like the cry of a child. Far to the left there was a bleating like a lamb. These were the signals arranged by the attacking force that was coming silently through the woods, and the sentinels went out a little way to see what a lamb and a child could be doing up here. They were knocked down, bound and carried off to a safe distance. By the time supper was ready in the ravine, the men in the woods were lying on the bank above, all around, looking down into the stronghold. The huts were ranged in two rows down the hollow, with a line of fires between and the fronts open. The entrance below was blocked by a log gate. But the men now ready to attack the place could climb like goats; they had all been brought up among the hills.All of a sudden arrows came shooting down on the careless banditti, and almost every one found its mark. Down to the roofs of the huts and to the ground came leaping figures, well armed and fighting with the strength and skill of trained men. Whenever they could they disarmed and bound their men, but the leader of the banditti was an exception to this rule. He was killed without a chance to surrender.When every man in the camp of the banditti[pg 92]had been cut down or captured—and about half of them surrendered,—the victors sat down and ate the feast prepared for the robbers.Next day, when things had been cleared up and put in order, each prisoner’s case was taken up separately. A few, whose deeds were the terror of the countryside, were executed. The rest were glad enough to join the troop under the Wolf, on probation. If they did well, they should be full members in time.The people of the villages were thankful to buy protection on the reasonable terms offered. They did not know exactly who these men were who had rid them of the banditti; some supposed they were a troop of soldiers from some chief. They almost never saw any of the band. The tax demanded was brought to a certain place and left there, and that was all. Emilius the priest often wondered why these men did not ask anything of his village, but they never did. Their village was the only one that had hardly ever suffered from the banditti. It was very odd. He never connected either of these facts with the long-ago visit of the shepherd youths and the tame wolf. So matters went on for a year or two. A guard was always left at the stronghold, but the men were often absent. Merchants and traders learned that they could get these men to[pg 93]protect them, at a price, when they were traveling through a strange country. They had really established a sort of patrol. The scattered hunters and fishermen had walked in desperate terror of the banditti, but they almost worshiped the troopers, and they would have died rather than reveal anything they had been told to keep secret. When Amulius, the hoary and evil chief of the people of the Long White Mountain, heard of these two youths who were such excellent fighters and whose men had so good a reputation, he tried to find out where they were, but he never could. For all the people of the country seemed to know, they might come out of the air and vanish into the clouds. It was very mysterious. When the young leader heard that Amulius had been trying to find him he smiled, and did not make any comment whatever.

The story the robbers had to tell, when they returned to their captain, was not a very likely one. It was so unlikely that they took time to talk the matter over thoroughly before attempting to face him. Perhaps it would be better to tell a lie, if they could concoct one that would do. The trouble was that they could not think of any explanation for their failure, that was likely to satisfy him any better than the plain facts.

Of course it seemed impossible that a man and a wolf should be traveling peaceably in company,—to say nothing of taking a child out of the hands of several strong and reckless men. But even so, where had they gone? One of the men had been quick enough to thrust with his spear at the wolf as he got it against the sky,—and it went through nothing. He forgot that the motion of an animal is usually quicker than the human eye, on such occasions. Moreover, though two of them went back down the path until they[pg 82]could hear the voices of the villagers, there was no sign of man, wolf or child. The conclusion they felt to be the only one possible was that the villagers’ gods had come and taken the child away from them, in the form of the wolf and the man. In that case they must be very powerful, so powerful that it would not be safe to attempt anything against that village in the future.

Gubbo, who came from that village, assured them that its gods were powerful indeed. He had not, when he and the other man were watching it, seen anything like this man and wolf apparition, and it was certainly remarkable enough to attract attention. Neither had the country people ever mentioned such a thing. Privately, Gubbo did not believe much in gods, but he was afraid of them for all that, because he was not sure. Gubbo’s father had impressed upon him very hard that if he did wrong, bad luck would surely overtake him. The patience of the gods was great, but they knew everything, and in the end no man could escape them. Gubbo, wincing at the pain where the wolf’s teeth had caught him, was uncomfortably wondering whether his bad luck had begun. There had never been any other failure to kidnap somebody, when men were sent to do it. Perhaps the bad luck in this case came from the fact that one of the party was attacking[pg 83]his own relatives and friends. There would be more bad luck when the chief of the bandits heard of this thing. Gubbo decided to dodge any further trouble if he could, and he lagged behind and quietly slipped away, to find some other way of making a living. He intended to go on traveling for a long time, to be out of the way of his former comrades.

It was just as well for him that he did this, for the men who returned to the den in the rocks and reported to the chief had a very bad time of it. The leader was executed, and so was the man who had had charge of the child. Of the other three, one died of the bite of the wolf and the others were very ill. After that, not a man of them could have been induced to join in an attack against that village. The chief wisely did not press the matter. After all, that was the nearest village of all those in their range, and it might not be altogether prudent to arouse the anger of the fighting men. It might lead to discovery.

The Cub, as he made his way back to the hut of Faustulus, was doing a great deal of thinking. When he was younger he had sometimes dreamed of being captain of a band of outlaws, because that seemed the only chance to be captain of anything, for a fatherless boy. But he had no taste[pg 84]for kidnaping children or being a nuisance to peaceable and kindly people. Merely to think of those scoundrels made him hot all over. He would have liked to follow their trail up to their very den, for he had an idea that he knew where it was. One day, when he and Pincho had been hunting together, he had seen a place where men evidently lived, and lived without any sort of peaceful farming or other business. If that were the den of the banditti, they could easily make themselves the pest of the countryside, and what they had done would be nothing to what they could do. Although he did not himself know it, this boy was the kind of person whose mind leaps ahead and sees possibilities for others as well as himself,—evil as well as good.

One day he asked his brother how he would like to gather the masterless men of all that neighborhood into a band of soldiery, to live by hunting and by fighting for any chief who would give them their living. They were growing too old to live much longer as they had lived. Perhaps if they could gather followers enough, they could go somewhere after awhile and make a place for themselves. First they might go to the Long White Mountain, where there was a rather large town, and see what the prospect was for such an undertaking. They had already[pg 85]taken part in one campaign, with some of the boys of the neighborhood, under the names of the Wolf and the Piper. All of the troop had some nickname or other. There was the Ram, whose head would crack an ordinary board in two; the Snake, who could wriggle out of any bonds ever tied—they had tried him time and again; Big Foot, Flop-Ear, Long Arm, and some others. They found the captain they had followed before glad to use them again and give them ordinary soldier rations. On the second night of their life in camp, a broad-shouldered and slightly bow-legged individual came and asked to see the head of the band. Gubbo did not recognize the young leader, but the latter knew him the moment he saw him. Gubbo explained that he had been a member of a company of banditti, had become disgusted with their ways, and left them. He would like to make an honest living.

“What can you do?”asked the youth consideringly.

Gubbo said that he could teach tricks in knife work to almost any man; also he could wrestle.

“Try me,”said the Wolf, slipping out of his heavy tunic. He enjoyed the rough-and-tumble that followed more than he had anything since he used to play with his wolf. This man really[pg 86]was a fair match for him. Gubbo was taken into the band.

“He is a brute,”said the Ram bluntly.

“He is,”said the leader.“But he can teach you fellows something.”

They learned a great deal from the villainous-looking newcomer, though if he had not been a little afraid of the young head of the troop, they might have paid a heavy price for their learning. The latter found out by judicious questioning that the den was where he had supposed it was. After a time he began to see that Gubbo was doing his men no good. The man was cruel, treacherous and base. Two or three times he had played tricks which others were blamed for. One day Gubbo heard that a merchant was coming along the road to the mountain villages, and at the same time he was sent on scout duty that way. He watched in the bushes until the man came along slowly, muffled in a long mantle, with a donkey loaded with panniers. He seemed to be old; his beard was white. Gubbo sprang on him; the man turned in that instant and met him with a knife thrust. Then the Wolf straightened up, dropped his white goat’s-hair beard and wig, and went back to camp. The bad luck that Gubbo feared had got him at last, and nobody mourned him at all.

Wolf and the Piper and their troop spent some seasons in fighting and adventure, and then they disappeared. It was said that they had separated.

This was true, but they had separated for a purpose. If the company went together to the lair of the banditti they might as well go blowing trumpets and beating drums; it would be known long before they came near. Their orders were to go by twos and threes, and when the moon was full to meet near a certain great rock that overlooked the valley where the river became a lake and then went on. One by one, as the young leader sat watching on this rock, dark forms came slipping through the shadows and joined him. Last of all came his brother, who had guided some of the party by a very roundabout way.

When all were there, and sentinels posted, he unfolded his plan. Above the place where they now sat, among the tumbled rocks of a narrow valley, was the headquarters of a most pestiferous company of robbers. For years they had terrified and despoiled the people of the villages, and if any resisted they were tormented almost beyond endurance in many different ways. The people were expected to turn over to them at certain times and places practically everything they produced, except just enough for a bare living.[pg 88]Whatever the banditti did not use themselves, they sold for things that could not be got in the villages. The villagers never knew what they were to be allowed to have at the end of the year, and often they suffered for food and warm clothing; but they stayed there because they knew nowhere else to go. It was a miserable state of things.

His plan was this. They were to steal upon this den of banditti and take it by surprise. Gubbo had said that it was not fortified to any extent, because the chief relied on the locality not being known. They were to kill the chief and such men as could not be trusted to behave themselves if they had a chance. Perhaps some would join the troop and abide by its rules. They would take the stronghold for their own, and keep it as a place to return to when they were not busy elsewhere. Then, instead of making enemies of the villagers or keeping them so terrified that they dared not refuse any request, let them make a friendly agreement. If the people who lived in these valleys gave them a certain tribute three or four times a year—a certain part of the crop, whatever it was—they would take care that there was no more plundering and kidnaping, and the farmers could attend to their own affairs in safety and comfort. If any enemy[pg 89]came against the people, too great for the Wolf and his soldiers to encounter successfully, the fighting men of the villages would be expected to help them, but they would undertake to keep the region clear of banditti. In return, if any one asked whether there was a band of outlaws hiding thereabouts, the villagers were to say that they did not know where there were any, and that would be the truth.

The plan was approved, as the young chief knew it would be. He had talked it over beforehand with each man separately. If the people were ungrateful enough, after the den of thieves was broken up, not to agree to the plan proposed, they could take their chance with other thieves, but he thought that after what they had been through in the last few years they would be willing to agree to almost anything.

As men are apt to do when they are much feared, the banditti in the rock-walled ravine were growing rather careless. The scouts of the Wolf’s troop were able to follow their movements closely. On the following night, when their destruction was to take place, the robbers were all in camp, having just returned from one of their expeditions to bring up supplies. The fat calf and the fowls and other provisions were sizzling and stewing over great fires. There was plenty[pg 90]of new wine. From a trader’s pack some of the younger men had got little ivory cubes with figures engraved on the sides, and were playing a game of chance. Their huts were furnished rather luxuriously, with fur robes, wool garments and gay hangings, but these, like their clothing, were stained and injured more or less by the fighting that usually took place over the plunder. The chief did not care what his men did in camp so long as they obeyed his orders. He did not wish them to do much thinking; he preferred to do all of that for them. He would have been surprised indeed if he had known that some of them did think and had almost made up their minds that they had had enough of him and of his methods and would go somewhere else.

As he grew older, the robber captain was fonder of eating and drinking, and now he sat on a handsome ivory stool near the fire—for the night was chilly—waiting for the meat to be done to a turn. The cook was a stout, short, bright-eyed man, a slave from across the river, and there was very little that he did not know about preparing rich dishes.

It was a windy night. The wind howled among the trees and down the ravine as if it were chasing something. It was like the howling of wolves, though there had been no wolves on that[pg 91]part of the mountain for a long time. Far to the right of the camp there was heard a noise like the cry of a child. Far to the left there was a bleating like a lamb. These were the signals arranged by the attacking force that was coming silently through the woods, and the sentinels went out a little way to see what a lamb and a child could be doing up here. They were knocked down, bound and carried off to a safe distance. By the time supper was ready in the ravine, the men in the woods were lying on the bank above, all around, looking down into the stronghold. The huts were ranged in two rows down the hollow, with a line of fires between and the fronts open. The entrance below was blocked by a log gate. But the men now ready to attack the place could climb like goats; they had all been brought up among the hills.

All of a sudden arrows came shooting down on the careless banditti, and almost every one found its mark. Down to the roofs of the huts and to the ground came leaping figures, well armed and fighting with the strength and skill of trained men. Whenever they could they disarmed and bound their men, but the leader of the banditti was an exception to this rule. He was killed without a chance to surrender.

When every man in the camp of the banditti[pg 92]had been cut down or captured—and about half of them surrendered,—the victors sat down and ate the feast prepared for the robbers.

Next day, when things had been cleared up and put in order, each prisoner’s case was taken up separately. A few, whose deeds were the terror of the countryside, were executed. The rest were glad enough to join the troop under the Wolf, on probation. If they did well, they should be full members in time.

The people of the villages were thankful to buy protection on the reasonable terms offered. They did not know exactly who these men were who had rid them of the banditti; some supposed they were a troop of soldiers from some chief. They almost never saw any of the band. The tax demanded was brought to a certain place and left there, and that was all. Emilius the priest often wondered why these men did not ask anything of his village, but they never did. Their village was the only one that had hardly ever suffered from the banditti. It was very odd. He never connected either of these facts with the long-ago visit of the shepherd youths and the tame wolf. So matters went on for a year or two. A guard was always left at the stronghold, but the men were often absent. Merchants and traders learned that they could get these men to[pg 93]protect them, at a price, when they were traveling through a strange country. They had really established a sort of patrol. The scattered hunters and fishermen had walked in desperate terror of the banditti, but they almost worshiped the troopers, and they would have died rather than reveal anything they had been told to keep secret. When Amulius, the hoary and evil chief of the people of the Long White Mountain, heard of these two youths who were such excellent fighters and whose men had so good a reputation, he tried to find out where they were, but he never could. For all the people of the country seemed to know, they might come out of the air and vanish into the clouds. It was very mysterious. When the young leader heard that Amulius had been trying to find him he smiled, and did not make any comment whatever.

[pg 94]VIIITHE BEEHIVE TEMPLEThe preparations at the village on the Mountain of Fire were completed during the winter, and the little company of men, women and children made ready to go out into the unknown world as soon as a favorable day arrived. It was a more serious undertaking than any they had known or even heard of before. Even when their ancestors came to this place, so long ago that no one could remember when it was, it was after a lifetime of wandering; they were not used to anything else. This company was made up of people who had never in their lives been more than a day’s journey from the place where they were born, and what was more, hardly any of their forefathers had, for generations.It was made still more difficult and doubtful by the fact that they were taking their women and children with them. There was no other way. There was not too much to eat in the vil[pg 95]lage, as it was, and there would be less, if the men went away for a year and left their families to be supported. Although the men would have preferred to go first and explore the land, the women were privately better pleased as it was. They felt that if their husbands were to be killed they wanted to die too. As for the children who were old enough to understand the situation, their feelings were mixed. It was exciting and delightful to be going to see new lands, and made them feel important and responsible, but when the time of leaving actually approached and they began to think of never seeing their old home again, they felt very sober indeed.They left the mountain on the day that was later called the Ides of March, at the beginning of spring, and slowly they followed the shining river out into the valley. Two-wheeled carts drawn by the oxen were loaded with the stores and clothing they were able to take with them. The fighting men had their weapons all in order. The boys were helping drive the cattle and sheep, and the married women had the younger children with them. Every one who was able to walk, walked. The eldest girl in each of the families—none was over ten years old—had charge of one most important thing—the fire. The little maidens walked soberly together, feeling a[pg 96]great dignity laid upon them. Each carried a round, strong basket lined with clay and covered with a beehive-shaped lid of a peculiar shape. In this were live coals carefully covered with ashes, for the kindling of the next fire. No matter what happened, they must not let those coals go out.Illustration: The little maidens walked soberly together“What-everhappened?”repeated a little yellow-haired girl, called Flavia because she was so fair. She was the daughter of Muraena the smith, and the youngest of the ten.Ursula, the biggest girl, laughed.“If we were crossing a river and one of us got drowned,[pg 97]I suppose her fire would be lost,”she said teasingly.“But they wouldn’t excuse us for anything short of that.”“But if it did go out—if all of the fires were put out?”persisted Flavia, walking a little closer to Marcia, whose word she felt that she could trust. She had visions of a dreadful anger of the gods,—another night of darkness and terror like the one they all remembered.“Should we never have a fire again, and have to eat things raw, and freeze to death, and let the wolves eat us up?”“Certainly not,”answered Marcia reassuringly.“Father told me all about that when I was younger than you are. Don’t you remember how they kindled the fire in the new year?”Flavia shook her yellow head.“I never noticed.”She had been so taken up with the chanting and the ceremonies that she had not seen how the fire actually blazed up on the altar.“They do it with theterebraand thetabula. Thetabulais a flat wooden block with a groove cut in it, and theterebrais a rubbing-stick that just fits the groove. They have some very fine chaff ready, and they move the stick very fast in the groove until it is quite hot. Don’t you know how warm your hands are after you rub them together? When there is a little spark it[pg 98]catches in the chaff, and then it is sheltered to keep it from going out, and fed with more chaff and dry splinters until the fire is kindled. They canalwayskindle a fire in that way.”“What if theterebraand thetabulawere lost?”asked Flavia.“They would make others.”“If I rubbed my hands together long enough, would they be on fire?”asked the child. She did not yet see how fire could be made just by rubbing bits of wood together. In fact, it was so much easier to keep the fire when it was once made that this was hardly ever done. It was only done regularly once a year, at the beginning of the month sacred to Mars. Then all the altar fires were put out and the priest kindled the sacred fire in this way afresh.The girls all laughed, and Marcia answered,“No, dear, it is only certain kinds of wood that will do that. I suppose the gods taught our people long ago which they were. The hearth god lives in the fire, you know. I always think it is like a living thing that will die without care. Father says that the fire keeps away the wicked fever spirits.”“What’s fever?”asked Yaya, on the other side.“Did you ever have it?”“No, never; but Father did once, when he was[pg 99]working on the road across the marsh, before I was born. It makes all your bones ache as if they were broken, and you cannot keep still because the spirits shake you all over. You grow hot and grow cold, and have bad dreams, and talk nonsense. Father woke up one day when he had the fever, and said that there were great rats coming to carry off my brother Marcs, who was a baby then, and he tried to get up and kill the rats, when there were none there. And when he was well he never remembered seeing the rats at all.”Although the children did not know it, a blazing fire and wool clothing help to keep away the malarial fever of a wet wilderness. The people believed that their gods taught them to keep up a fire, to wear clean wool garments and to drink pure water, and it is certain that they were wise in doing all these things religiously, as they did. When they found a good spring on their journey they filled their water bottles and left a little gift there for the god of the waters. They kept near pure running water when they could, and away from standing water, even if they had to go a long way round to do it. In the sudden damps and chills of the lowlands through which they traveled the tunics and mantles of pure wool kept them from taking cold, and there[pg 100]was very little sickness on the journey. They kept to their own habits of eating, and the children were not allowed to experiment with strange and possibly unripe fruits.It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a miserable living as he could,—simply because the land was not fit to live in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing, stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they could not go without meeting strange people and the worship of strange and cruel gods.Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of coals was made ready for the next day’s[pg 101]journey. It was the duty of the ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire god. One or another was always there.One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes, Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant, pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer when they found some one’s back turned. They looked like the people of Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going on. The water was[pg 102]good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old chief who had died in a far land many years ago.This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them. They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that, they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all the way[pg 103]around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.Illustration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambsIn flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say, animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs[pg 104]in that way was picking her steps across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise—two noises—from a willow basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in. The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw, and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry side, and she licked them all over.A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down, looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big, strong body.The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to take the children away from her she would fight, and they might[pg 105]be hurt, and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help. Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a[pg 106]rocky stronghold on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way, some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two brothers came to the camp of the colonists.When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the patrol in the mountains.For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the colony to live!Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain. The wild face of Romulus changed and[pg 107]kindled as he talked, and Marcus Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his land and his people.The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after year, and their people find a home.

The preparations at the village on the Mountain of Fire were completed during the winter, and the little company of men, women and children made ready to go out into the unknown world as soon as a favorable day arrived. It was a more serious undertaking than any they had known or even heard of before. Even when their ancestors came to this place, so long ago that no one could remember when it was, it was after a lifetime of wandering; they were not used to anything else. This company was made up of people who had never in their lives been more than a day’s journey from the place where they were born, and what was more, hardly any of their forefathers had, for generations.

It was made still more difficult and doubtful by the fact that they were taking their women and children with them. There was no other way. There was not too much to eat in the vil[pg 95]lage, as it was, and there would be less, if the men went away for a year and left their families to be supported. Although the men would have preferred to go first and explore the land, the women were privately better pleased as it was. They felt that if their husbands were to be killed they wanted to die too. As for the children who were old enough to understand the situation, their feelings were mixed. It was exciting and delightful to be going to see new lands, and made them feel important and responsible, but when the time of leaving actually approached and they began to think of never seeing their old home again, they felt very sober indeed.

They left the mountain on the day that was later called the Ides of March, at the beginning of spring, and slowly they followed the shining river out into the valley. Two-wheeled carts drawn by the oxen were loaded with the stores and clothing they were able to take with them. The fighting men had their weapons all in order. The boys were helping drive the cattle and sheep, and the married women had the younger children with them. Every one who was able to walk, walked. The eldest girl in each of the families—none was over ten years old—had charge of one most important thing—the fire. The little maidens walked soberly together, feeling a[pg 96]great dignity laid upon them. Each carried a round, strong basket lined with clay and covered with a beehive-shaped lid of a peculiar shape. In this were live coals carefully covered with ashes, for the kindling of the next fire. No matter what happened, they must not let those coals go out.

Illustration: The little maidens walked soberly together

“What-everhappened?”repeated a little yellow-haired girl, called Flavia because she was so fair. She was the daughter of Muraena the smith, and the youngest of the ten.

Ursula, the biggest girl, laughed.“If we were crossing a river and one of us got drowned,[pg 97]I suppose her fire would be lost,”she said teasingly.“But they wouldn’t excuse us for anything short of that.”

“But if it did go out—if all of the fires were put out?”persisted Flavia, walking a little closer to Marcia, whose word she felt that she could trust. She had visions of a dreadful anger of the gods,—another night of darkness and terror like the one they all remembered.“Should we never have a fire again, and have to eat things raw, and freeze to death, and let the wolves eat us up?”

“Certainly not,”answered Marcia reassuringly.“Father told me all about that when I was younger than you are. Don’t you remember how they kindled the fire in the new year?”

Flavia shook her yellow head.“I never noticed.”She had been so taken up with the chanting and the ceremonies that she had not seen how the fire actually blazed up on the altar.

“They do it with theterebraand thetabula. Thetabulais a flat wooden block with a groove cut in it, and theterebrais a rubbing-stick that just fits the groove. They have some very fine chaff ready, and they move the stick very fast in the groove until it is quite hot. Don’t you know how warm your hands are after you rub them together? When there is a little spark it[pg 98]catches in the chaff, and then it is sheltered to keep it from going out, and fed with more chaff and dry splinters until the fire is kindled. They canalwayskindle a fire in that way.”

“What if theterebraand thetabulawere lost?”asked Flavia.

“They would make others.”

“If I rubbed my hands together long enough, would they be on fire?”asked the child. She did not yet see how fire could be made just by rubbing bits of wood together. In fact, it was so much easier to keep the fire when it was once made that this was hardly ever done. It was only done regularly once a year, at the beginning of the month sacred to Mars. Then all the altar fires were put out and the priest kindled the sacred fire in this way afresh.

The girls all laughed, and Marcia answered,

“No, dear, it is only certain kinds of wood that will do that. I suppose the gods taught our people long ago which they were. The hearth god lives in the fire, you know. I always think it is like a living thing that will die without care. Father says that the fire keeps away the wicked fever spirits.”

“What’s fever?”asked Yaya, on the other side.“Did you ever have it?”

“No, never; but Father did once, when he was[pg 99]working on the road across the marsh, before I was born. It makes all your bones ache as if they were broken, and you cannot keep still because the spirits shake you all over. You grow hot and grow cold, and have bad dreams, and talk nonsense. Father woke up one day when he had the fever, and said that there were great rats coming to carry off my brother Marcs, who was a baby then, and he tried to get up and kill the rats, when there were none there. And when he was well he never remembered seeing the rats at all.”

Although the children did not know it, a blazing fire and wool clothing help to keep away the malarial fever of a wet wilderness. The people believed that their gods taught them to keep up a fire, to wear clean wool garments and to drink pure water, and it is certain that they were wise in doing all these things religiously, as they did. When they found a good spring on their journey they filled their water bottles and left a little gift there for the god of the waters. They kept near pure running water when they could, and away from standing water, even if they had to go a long way round to do it. In the sudden damps and chills of the lowlands through which they traveled the tunics and mantles of pure wool kept them from taking cold, and there[pg 100]was very little sickness on the journey. They kept to their own habits of eating, and the children were not allowed to experiment with strange and possibly unripe fruits.

It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a miserable living as he could,—simply because the land was not fit to live in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing, stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they could not go without meeting strange people and the worship of strange and cruel gods.

Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of coals was made ready for the next day’s[pg 101]journey. It was the duty of the ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire god. One or another was always there.

One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes, Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant, pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer when they found some one’s back turned. They looked like the people of Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?

The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going on. The water was[pg 102]good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old chief who had died in a far land many years ago.

This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them. They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.

The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that, they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all the way[pg 103]around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.

Illustration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs

In flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say, animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs[pg 104]in that way was picking her steps across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise—two noises—from a willow basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in. The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw, and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry side, and she licked them all over.

A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down, looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big, strong body.

The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to take the children away from her she would fight, and they might[pg 105]be hurt, and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help. Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a[pg 106]rocky stronghold on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way, some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two brothers came to the camp of the colonists.

When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the patrol in the mountains.

For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the colony to live!

Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain. The wild face of Romulus changed and[pg 107]kindled as he talked, and Marcus Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his land and his people.

The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after year, and their people find a home.

[pg 108]IXTHE SQUARE HILLThe colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great deal of loss and trouble in the end.While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from them. The brush that was not needed[pg 109]for the fires was made into loose fagots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a trap.When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and called a sharpened stake a“palum.”A fence built of boards set up in this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The word fence itself is only a short word for“defence,”—a defence made of pointed stakes planted in the ground.The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of a low earthwork[pg 110]that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through high loopholes.There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.The gate was made as strong as possible, of smaller tree trunks lashed together, and strengthened on the inside by crosspieces. When it was closed, two logs, one at the top and one at the bottom, were laid in place across it. Some one was always there to guard it, day and night, and[pg 111]could see through a little window who was coming up the hill.Although strongholds like this had not been necessary for many years in their old home, there was one, built of stone in the ancient days, and never allowed to go to ruin. It seemed very adventurous to the boys to be erecting defences like that for their own families. But Romulus and Remus had told them that this would be the only way of being quite safe. They had a great deal that petty thieves might want to steal; and the chief Amulius might take it into his head to send a force to attack them, if he knew that so large a party of strangers had come in. When they had been there some years, and more people had joined the colony, the seven hills could be fortified so that nobody could take them. Colonus himself could see that, and it gave him a feeling of confidence and respect for his young cousin to know that he had seen it too.By the time the palisade was finished, not only most of the land within it was clear, but the material for the huts was ready and some huts had been built. The timber was piled as it was cut, by the boys of the various families, on the lots marked out for the houses. The younger children cut reeds and grass for thatching and for the fodder of the cattle. They did this work[pg 112]in little companies and had a very pleasant time. Sometimes they caught fish, or shot waterfowl with their bows and arrows, or set snares for game.Later the men would gather stone for a stone wall in place of the palisade, to run along the same line, and then the seasoned timbers of their log wall would still be good for building purposes. There was a steeper and narrower hill near the river which would make an excellent fortress. But the thoughts of the colony now were given to laying out farms.They cleared and laid out wheat fields and orchards and vineyards as soon as they found land suitable. As any farmer knows, the sooner land is cultivated the more can be got out of it; it is not work that can all be done in a year, or two years, or three. This is especially true of land never used before for anything but pasture, and much of this had never been used even for that. Sheep do not like wet ground, and both sheep and cattle, unless they were tended constantly, might stray into the swampy low grounds. Drainage would help that land; when some of it was drained it would make rich lush meadows and golden grain fields. The land-loving Vitali could see visions of richer crops than any they had ever harvested, growing on that[pg 113]unpromising plain, if only they could have their way with it.The children who were here, there and everywhere, watching all that was done and helping where they could, felt as if they were looking on at the making of a new world. It was really almost like a miracle—some of the ignorant marsh folk thought it was one—when that uncultivated hilltop, overgrown with bushes and wind-stunted trees and with the rocky bones of it cropping out here and there, became a trim encampment of orderly thatched huts. The beasts grew sleek and fat on the good fodder and grazing, and no one had appeared so far who had any evil designs. In fact, few persons came near them at all. It was as if they had the new world all to themselves.In the house-building the children helped considerably after the men got the timber frames up. Instead of building stone walls, they were going to do what they had sometimes done before when a wall was run up temporarily,—use mud. They set stakes in rows along the walls, not close together like the palisade, but far enough apart for twigs and branches to be woven in and out between them like a very rough basketry. When this was done the men built a kind of pen on the ground, for a mixing bowl, and brought lime[pg 114]and sand and clay and water, and mixed it with tough grass into a sort of rough plaster. This was daubed all over the walls with wooden spades until the whole was quite covered, and when it hardened it would be weather-proof and warm. Small houses built in this“wattle and daub”fashion have been known to last hundreds of years.The thatched roof was four-sided, running up to a hole in the middle to let out the smoke. When it rained, the rain dripped in around the edges of the hole and ran into a tank under it. The altar with the sacred fire was at one side of this tank, and when the room was dark the flame was reflected in the wavering, shining depths of the water. The space opposite the door, beyond the altar, was where the father and mother slept, and later it might be walled off into a private room. Other rooms could be partitioned off along the sides. In later times there was a small entry or vestibule between the door and the inner rooms. But although the other rooms might vary in number and size and use, theatrium, the middle space, in which were the altar and theimpluviumor water pool, remained the same. It was the heart of the home. Here the family worship was held, and this was the common room of the family.[pg 115]The plan of the encampment itself was like the house on a larger scale. The huts were built around the inside of the palisade, with a separating space or belt of land that was never plowed or built on—thepomerium, the space“before the wall.”In the middle was an open square which was to the town what theatriumwas to the house,—the common ground, where public worship was held, announcements made, and public affairs social or religious carried on. Here was the beehive hut with the sacred fire, and all other temples or public buildings there might be would open on this square. The line of encircling houses made a sort of inner defense line, and even if any stranger could have climbed the wall for purposes of robbery or spying, it would have been hard for him to pass the houses without being found out.This was the ancient way in which all the towns of this race were built. As the towns increased in size, other gates were opened, and streets laid out, but always after the same general plan. And as a family never stayed indoors when it was possible to work or play in the open air, so the colonists did not stay inside their wall when they could go out on the common land and make it fruitful. Their descendants are seldom contented to live inside walls and streets, where they[pg 116]can have no land of their own. They find homes outside, where they can have land to dig up and plant and tend and watch, season after season,—and in the thousands of years since they began to plant and to reap, they have gone almost everywhere in the world.

The colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great deal of loss and trouble in the end.

While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from them. The brush that was not needed[pg 109]for the fires was made into loose fagots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a trap.

When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and called a sharpened stake a“palum.”A fence built of boards set up in this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The word fence itself is only a short word for“defence,”—a defence made of pointed stakes planted in the ground.

The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of a low earthwork[pg 110]that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through high loopholes.

There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.

The gate was made as strong as possible, of smaller tree trunks lashed together, and strengthened on the inside by crosspieces. When it was closed, two logs, one at the top and one at the bottom, were laid in place across it. Some one was always there to guard it, day and night, and[pg 111]could see through a little window who was coming up the hill.

Although strongholds like this had not been necessary for many years in their old home, there was one, built of stone in the ancient days, and never allowed to go to ruin. It seemed very adventurous to the boys to be erecting defences like that for their own families. But Romulus and Remus had told them that this would be the only way of being quite safe. They had a great deal that petty thieves might want to steal; and the chief Amulius might take it into his head to send a force to attack them, if he knew that so large a party of strangers had come in. When they had been there some years, and more people had joined the colony, the seven hills could be fortified so that nobody could take them. Colonus himself could see that, and it gave him a feeling of confidence and respect for his young cousin to know that he had seen it too.

By the time the palisade was finished, not only most of the land within it was clear, but the material for the huts was ready and some huts had been built. The timber was piled as it was cut, by the boys of the various families, on the lots marked out for the houses. The younger children cut reeds and grass for thatching and for the fodder of the cattle. They did this work[pg 112]in little companies and had a very pleasant time. Sometimes they caught fish, or shot waterfowl with their bows and arrows, or set snares for game.

Later the men would gather stone for a stone wall in place of the palisade, to run along the same line, and then the seasoned timbers of their log wall would still be good for building purposes. There was a steeper and narrower hill near the river which would make an excellent fortress. But the thoughts of the colony now were given to laying out farms.

They cleared and laid out wheat fields and orchards and vineyards as soon as they found land suitable. As any farmer knows, the sooner land is cultivated the more can be got out of it; it is not work that can all be done in a year, or two years, or three. This is especially true of land never used before for anything but pasture, and much of this had never been used even for that. Sheep do not like wet ground, and both sheep and cattle, unless they were tended constantly, might stray into the swampy low grounds. Drainage would help that land; when some of it was drained it would make rich lush meadows and golden grain fields. The land-loving Vitali could see visions of richer crops than any they had ever harvested, growing on that[pg 113]unpromising plain, if only they could have their way with it.

The children who were here, there and everywhere, watching all that was done and helping where they could, felt as if they were looking on at the making of a new world. It was really almost like a miracle—some of the ignorant marsh folk thought it was one—when that uncultivated hilltop, overgrown with bushes and wind-stunted trees and with the rocky bones of it cropping out here and there, became a trim encampment of orderly thatched huts. The beasts grew sleek and fat on the good fodder and grazing, and no one had appeared so far who had any evil designs. In fact, few persons came near them at all. It was as if they had the new world all to themselves.

In the house-building the children helped considerably after the men got the timber frames up. Instead of building stone walls, they were going to do what they had sometimes done before when a wall was run up temporarily,—use mud. They set stakes in rows along the walls, not close together like the palisade, but far enough apart for twigs and branches to be woven in and out between them like a very rough basketry. When this was done the men built a kind of pen on the ground, for a mixing bowl, and brought lime[pg 114]and sand and clay and water, and mixed it with tough grass into a sort of rough plaster. This was daubed all over the walls with wooden spades until the whole was quite covered, and when it hardened it would be weather-proof and warm. Small houses built in this“wattle and daub”fashion have been known to last hundreds of years.

The thatched roof was four-sided, running up to a hole in the middle to let out the smoke. When it rained, the rain dripped in around the edges of the hole and ran into a tank under it. The altar with the sacred fire was at one side of this tank, and when the room was dark the flame was reflected in the wavering, shining depths of the water. The space opposite the door, beyond the altar, was where the father and mother slept, and later it might be walled off into a private room. Other rooms could be partitioned off along the sides. In later times there was a small entry or vestibule between the door and the inner rooms. But although the other rooms might vary in number and size and use, theatrium, the middle space, in which were the altar and theimpluviumor water pool, remained the same. It was the heart of the home. Here the family worship was held, and this was the common room of the family.

The plan of the encampment itself was like the house on a larger scale. The huts were built around the inside of the palisade, with a separating space or belt of land that was never plowed or built on—thepomerium, the space“before the wall.”In the middle was an open square which was to the town what theatriumwas to the house,—the common ground, where public worship was held, announcements made, and public affairs social or religious carried on. Here was the beehive hut with the sacred fire, and all other temples or public buildings there might be would open on this square. The line of encircling houses made a sort of inner defense line, and even if any stranger could have climbed the wall for purposes of robbery or spying, it would have been hard for him to pass the houses without being found out.

This was the ancient way in which all the towns of this race were built. As the towns increased in size, other gates were opened, and streets laid out, but always after the same general plan. And as a family never stayed indoors when it was possible to work or play in the open air, so the colonists did not stay inside their wall when they could go out on the common land and make it fruitful. Their descendants are seldom contented to live inside walls and streets, where they[pg 116]can have no land of their own. They find homes outside, where they can have land to dig up and plant and tend and watch, season after season,—and in the thousands of years since they began to plant and to reap, they have gone almost everywhere in the world.

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