became their captain.

"I accept," said Valentine, "provided you release my servant, and are
not violent to women or the poor."

The reply was worthy of Virgil, and Valentine became a brigand chief.

We return now to Julia, who found Verona too dull to live in since
Proteus had gone. She begged her maid Lucetta to devise a way by which
she could see him. "Better wait for him to return," said Lucetta, and
she talked so sensibly that Julia saw it was idle to hope that Lucetta
would bear the blame of any rash and interesting adventure. Julia
therefore said that she intended to go to Milan and dressed like a page.

"You must cut off your hair then," said Lucetta, who thought that at
this announcement Julia would immediately abandon her scheme.

"I shall knot it up," was the disappointing rejoinder.

Lucetta then tried to make the scheme seem foolish to Julia, but Julia
had made up her mind and was not to be put off by ridicule; and when her
toilet was completed, she looked as comely a page as one could wish to
see.

Julia assumed the male name Sebastian, and arrived in Milan in time to
hear music being performed outside the Duke's palace.

"They are serenading the Lady Silvia," said a man to her.

Suddenly she heard a voice lifted in song, and she knew that voice. It
was the voice of Proteus. But what was he singing?

"Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her
That she might admired be."

Julia tried not to hear the rest, but these two lines somehow thundered
into her mind--

"Then to Silvia let us sing;
She excels each mortal thing."

Then Proteus thought Silvia excelled Julia; and, since he sang so
beautifully for all the world to hear, it seemed that he was not only
false to Julia, but had forgotten her. Yet Julia still loved him. She
even went to him, and asked to be his page, and Proteus engaged her.

One day, he handed to her the ring which she had given him, and said,
"Sebastian, take that to the Lady Silvia, and say that I should like the
picture of her she promised me."

Silvia had promised the picture, but she disliked Proteus. She was
obliged to talk to him because he was high in the favor of her father,
who thought he pleaded with her on behalf of Sir Thurio. Silvia had
learned from Valentine that Proteus was pledged to a sweetheart in
Verona; and when he said tender things to her