mb, thou singer of singers?"

"My words?" answered Teja, rising; "my words and my thoughts would be
perhaps harder to bear than all our suffering. Let me yet be silent, my
sun-bright Totila. Perhaps a day will come when I may answer thee.
Perhaps, also, I may once more play on my harp, if but a string will
vibrate."

And he left the tent; for outside in the camp a confused and
inexplicable noise of calling and questioning voices arose. The friends
looked silently after Teja.

"I guess his thoughts," at last said old Hildebrand, "for I have known
him from his boyhood. He is not as other men. And in the Northland
there are many who think like him, who do not believe in Thor and Odin,
but only in necessity and in their own strength. It is almost too heavy
a burden for a human heart to bear, and it makes no one happy to think
as he does. I wonder that he can sing and play the harp
notwithstanding."

Just then Teja, returning, tore open the curtain of the tent; his face
was still paler than before; his dark eyes flashed; but his voice was
as quiet as ever as he said:

"Break up the camp. King Witichis. Our ships have fallen into the
enemy's hands at Ostia. They have sent the head of Earl Odoswinth into
the camp. And upon the walls of Rome, before the very eyes of our
sentinels, they slaughter the cattle taken from the Goths. Large
reinforcements from Byzantium, under Valerian and Euthalius--Huns,
Slaves and Antians--have been brought into the Tiber by many ships. For
Johannes has marched through Picenum."

"And Earl Ulithis?"

"Has been killed and his troops beaten. Ancona and Ariminum are taken,
and----"

"Is that not yet all?" cried the King.

"No, Witichis. Johannes threatens Ravenna, He is only a few miles
distant from that city. And urgent haste is necessary."

CHAPTER XV.

The day after the arrival of this news, so fateful for the Goths, King
Witichis abandoned the siege of Rome and led his thoroughly
disheartened troops out of the four remaining camps.

The siege had lasted a whole year and nine days. All courage and
strength, exertion and sacrifice, had been unavailing.

Silently the Goths marched past the proud walls, against which their
power and good-fortune had been wrecked. Silently they suffered the
taunting words cast at them from the battlements by Romans and
Byzantines.

They were too much absorbed by their grief and rage to feel hurt by
such mockery. But