incur the rebuke of the king, as the chance of the moment might
happen to decide.

After again fixing his eyes in severe scrutiny on the person of the
Roman, Alaric spoke to the young warrior in the Gothic language thus:--

'Leave the man with me--return to your post, and there await whatever
commands it may be necessary that I should despatch to you to-night.'

Hermanric immediately departed. Then, addressing the stranger for the
first time, and speaking in the Latin language, the Gothic leader
briefly and significantly intimated to his unknown visitant that they
were now alone.

The man's parched lips moved, opened, quivered; his wild, hollow eyes
brightened till they absolutely gleamed, but he seemed incapable of
uttering a word; his features became horribly convulsed, the foam
gathered about his lips, he staggered forward and would have fallen to
the ground, had not the king instantly caught him in his strong grasp,
and placed him on the wooden chest that he had hitherto occupied
himself.

'Can a starving Roman have escaped from the beleaguered city?' muttered
Alaric, as he took the skull cup, and poured some of the wine it
contained down the stranger's throat.

The liquor was immediately successful in restoring composure to the
man's features and consciousness to his mind. He raised himself from
the seat, dashed off the cold perspiration that overspread his
forehead, and stood upright before the king--the solitary, powerless
old man before the vigorous lord of thousands, in the midst of his
warriors--without a tremor in his steady eye or a prayer for protection
on his haughty lip.

'I, a Roman,' he began, 'come from Rome, against which the invader wars
with the weapon of famine, to deliver the city, her people, her
palaces, and her treasures into the hands of Alaric the Goth.'

The king started, looked on the speaker for a moment, and then turned
from him in impatience and contempt.

'I lie not,' pursued the enthusiast, with a calm dignity that affected
even the hardy sensibilities of the Gothic hero. 'Eye me again! Could
I come starved, shrivelled, withered thus from any place but Rome?
Since I quitted the city an hour has hardly passed, and by the way that
I left it the forces of the Goths may enter it to-night.'

'The proof of the harvest is in the quantity of the grain, not in the
tongue of the husbandman. Show me your open gates, and I will believe
that you have spoken truth,' retorted the kin