cries, mingled with hoarse laughter, and
the spectacle presented to the eyes was no less rough and bold.

The majority seemed to be powerful men. Their complexions were as light
as the Macedonians; their fair, red, and brown locks were thick, unkempt,
and bristling. Most of the reckless, defiantly bold faces were
smooth-shaven, with only a mustache on the upper lip, and sometimes a
short imperial. All carried weapons, and a fleece covered the shoulders
of many, while chains, ornamented with the teeth of animals, hung on
their white muscular chests.

"Galatians," Hermon heard one man near him call to another. "They came to
the fortress as auxiliary troops. Philippus forbade them to plunder on
pain of death, and showed them--the gods be thanked!--that he was in
earnest. Otherwise it would soon look here as though the plagues of
locusts, flood, and fire had visited us at once. Red-haired men are not
the only sons of Typhon!"

And Hermon thought that he had indeed never seen any human beings equally
fierce, bold to the verge of reckless madness, as these Gallic warriors.
The tempest which swept them forward, and the water through which they
waded, only seemed to increase their enjoyment, for sheer delight rang in
their exulting shouts and yells.

Oh, yes! To march amid this uproar of the elements was a pleasure to the
healthy men. It afforded them the rarest, most enlivening delight. For a
long time nothing had so strongly reminded them of the roaring of the
wind and the rushing of the rain in their northern home. It seemed a
delicious relief, after the heat and dryness of the south, which they had
endured with groans.

When they perceived the eyes fixed upon them they swung their weapons,
arched their breasts with conscious vanity, distorted their faces into
terrible threatening grimaces, or raised bugle horns to their lips, drew
from them shrill, ear-piercing notes and gloated, with childish delight,
in the terror of the gaping crowd, on whom the restraint of authority
sternly forbade them to show their mettle.

Lust of rapine and greed for booty glittered in many a fiery, longing
look, but their leaders kept them in check with the sword. So they rushed
on without stopping, like a thunderstorm pregnant with destruction which
the wind drives over a terrified village.

Hermon also had to take the road they followed, and, after giving the
Gauls a long start, he set out again.

But though he succeeded in passing the