y's piled-up
wagons, and a tall swordsman, with a bear-skin over his shoulder, and
long, reddish-gold hair, flew to meet him.

This was no sham German! Caracalla knew the man. He had been brought to
Rome among the captive chiefs, and, as he had proved to be a splendid
horseman, he had found employment in Caesar's stables. His conduct
had always been blameless till, on the day when Caracalla had entered
Alexandria, he had, in a drunken fit, killed first the man set over
him, a hot-headed Gaul, and then the two lictors who had attempted to
apprehend him. He was condemned to death, and had been placed on the
German side to fight for his life in the arena.

And how he fought! How he defied the most determined of gladiators, and
parried his strokes with his short sword! This was a combat really worth
watching; indeed, it so captivated Caracalla that he forgot everything
else. The name of the German's antagonist had been applied to
him--Caesar. Just now the many-voiced yell "Tarautas!" had been meant
for him; and, accustomed as he was to read an omen in every incident, he
said to himself, and called Fate to witness, that the gladiator's doom
would foreshadow his own. If Tarautas fell, then Caesar's days were
numbered; if he triumphed, then a long and happy life would be his.

He could leave the decision to Tarautas with perfect confidence; he was
the strongest gladiator in the empire, and he was fighting with a sharp
sword against the blunt one in his antagonist's hand, who probably had
forgotten in the stable how to wield the sword as he had done of yore.
But the German was the son of a chief, and had followed arms from his
earliest youth. Here it was defense for dear life, however glorious it
might be to die under the eyes of the man whom he had learned to honor
as the conqueror and tyrant of many nations, among them his own. So the
strong and practiced athlete did his best.

He, like his opponent, felt that the eyes of ten thousand were on him,
and he also longed to purge himself of the dishonor which, by actual
murder, he had brought on himself and on the race of which he was still
a son. Every muscle of his powerful frame gained more rigid tension at
the thought, and when he was presently hit by the sword of his hitherto
unconquered foe, and felt the warm blood flow over his breast and left
arm, he collected all his strength. With the battle-cry of his tribe,
he flung his huge body on the gladiator. Heedless of the fu