w quietly you came!' said Una, moving up to make room. 'Where's Puck?'

'The Faun and I have disputed whether it is better that I should tell
you all my tale, or leave it untold,' he replied.

'I only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn't understand
it,' said Puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log.

'I don't understand all of it,' said Una, 'but I like hearing about the
little Picts.'

'What I can't understand,' said Dan, 'is how Maximus knew all about the
Picts when he was over in Gaul.'

'He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must know everything,
everywhere,' said Parnesius. 'We had this much from Maximus's mouth
after the Games.'

'Games? What Games?' said Dan.

Parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground.
'Gladiators! _That_ sort of game,' he said. 'There were two days' Games
in his honour when he landed all unexpected at Segedunum on the East end
of the Wall. Yes, the day after we had met him we held two days' Games;
but I think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches on the
sand, but by Maximus. In the old days the Legions kept silence before
their Emperor. So did not we! You could hear the solid roar run West
along the Wall as his chair was carried rocking through the crowds. The
garrison beat round him--clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for
change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. That
chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but
always rising again after one had shut the eyes.' Parnesius shivered.

'Were they angry with him?' said Dan.

'No more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among
them. If he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased
to hold their eyes, there would have been another Emperor made on the
Wall that hour. Was it not so, Faun?'

'So it was. So it always will be,' said Puck.

'Late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we followed to the
Temple of Victory, where he lodged with Rutilianus, the General of the
Wall. I had hardly seen the General before, but he always gave me leave
when I wished to take Heather. He was a great glutton, and kept five
Asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles. We could
smell his good dinner when we entered, but the tables were empty. He lay
snorting on a couch. Maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts.
Then the doors were shut.

'"These are your men," said Maximus to th