eremony.

"Since the sun set it has slept in the meadow where you learned to break
horses and to use arms. The young men of the tribe are keeping guard
over it. The obsequies worthy of so great a chief will take place at
sunrise. Then, as our new king, you will give us counsel upon the great
affairs of the tribe."

Alorcus compelled the Greek to sit beside him. The women filed in with
torches, since no more than a dim twilight was produced by the pale,
diffused glow filtering through the narrow slits in the wall. The
sisters of Alorcus, with lowered eyes, their flowery tunics floating
about their strong, virginal forms, passed before the warriors, offering
drinking horns filled with metheglin and beer. The men imbibed
enormously without losing self-control. They recounted the deeds of
Endovellicus as if he had died many years before, and they told of the
great enterprises in which his successor would surely lead them hinting
again and again, in mysterious words, at a subject with which they must
deal in the council on the morrow.

Supper was brought. The Celtiberians were not accustomed to eating at
table like the people of the coast. They remained seated on the stone
bench. The women placed beside them a wheaten loaf, instead of the acorn
bread which was commonly eaten, this being an extraordinary feast.
Others passed a great vessel filled with chunks of roasted meat still
dripping blood, and each warrior speared a piece with the point of his
knife. Horns overflowing with liquor circulated from hand to hand, and
Actaeon accepted with graceful mien whatever his neighbors, in hospitable
phrase which he could not understand, offered him.

Supper being ended, the young men of the tribe came in with trumpets and
flutes, and began to play a bizarre air which combined the joy of the
chase with the fury of their charge upon the enemy in battle. The
guests were aroused, and the youngest among them, springing into the
centre of the room, began to dance with gymnastic freedom. It was the
dance with which the Celtiberians terminated their banquets, a violent
exercise which put their muscles to the test, and caused them to regain
their spirit even in moments of greatest depression.

Long before midnight the warriors retired, leaving Alorcus and Actaeon
alone in the great smoke-filled room, where sputtered the torches,
tingeing the barbaric decorations on the walls with a blood-like hue.
They slept on couches of aromatic herbs,