_
to suit its noises.

Una took Dan's catapult from its secret place, and
made ready to meet Lars Porsena's army stealing
through the wind-whitened aspens by the brook. A gust
boomed up the valley, and Una chanted sorrowfully:

'Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain:
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.'

But the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started aside and shook a
single oak in Gleason's pasture. Here it made itself all small and
crouched among the grasses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the
tip of her tail before she springs.

'Now welcome--welcome, Sextus,' sang Una, loading the catapult--

'Now welcome to thy home!
Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome.'

She fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the cowardly wind, and
heard a grunt from behind a thorn in the pasture.

'Oh, my Winkie!' she said aloud, and that was something she had picked
up from Dan. 'I b'lieve I've tickled up a Gleason cow.'

'You little painted beast!' a voice cried. 'I'll teach you to sling your
masters!'

She looked down most cautiously, and saw a young man covered with hoopy
bronze armour all glowing among the late broom. But what Una admired
beyond all was his great bronze helmet with a red horse-tail that
flicked in the wind. She could hear the long hairs rasp on his shimmery
shoulder-plates.

'What does the Faun mean,' he said, half aloud to himself, 'by telling
me that the Painted People have changed?' He caught sight of Una's
yellow head. 'Have you seen a painted lead-slinger?' he called.

'No-o,' said Una. 'But if you've seen a bullet----'

'Seen?' cried the man. 'It passed within a hair's breadth of my ear.'

'Well, that was me. I'm most awfully sorry.'

'Didn't the Faun tell you I was coming?' He smiled.

'Not if you mean Puck. I thought you were a Gleason cow. I--I didn't
know you were a--a----What are you?'

He laughed outright, showing a set of splendid teeth. His face and eyes
were dark, and his eyebrows met above his big nose in one bushy black
bar.

'They call me Parnesius. I have been a Centurion of the Seventh Cohort
of the Thirtieth Legion--the Ulpia Victrix. Did you sling that bullet?'

'I did. I was using Dan's catapult,' said Una.

'Catapults!' said he. 'I ought to know something about them. Show me!'

He leaped the rough fence with a rattle of spear, shield, and armour,
and hoisted himsel