he Heifer!"

"Surely! And since Caesar is going to distribute much of your
depopulated country among his veterans, those who have no reserve
prisoners will be under the necessity of buying slaves to cultivate and
re-people their parcels of land. You are of that strong rustic race, and
consequently I have hopes of getting a good price for you from some new
colonist."

"Listen to me. I would rather know that my son and daughter were dead,
like their mother, than have them saved to be slaves. Nevertheless,
since there were found near the chariot some children who had
survived--a thing that astonishes me, since the women of Gaul always
strike with a firm and sure hand when it is a case of snatching their
race from shame--it is possible that my children may be among those
found. How can I find out?"

"What good will finding out do you?"

"I will at least have with me my two children."

The "horse-dealer" began to laugh, shrugged his shoulders, and answered:

"Then you didn't hear me? By Jupiter, I advise you not to be deaf--you
would be returned to me. I told you that I neither bought nor sold
children."

"What does that matter to me?"

"Among a hundred purchasers of slaves for farm-hands, there would not be
ten so foolish as to buy a man and his two children, without their
mother. So that to offer you for sale with two brats, if they are still
living, would make me lose half your value by burdening your purchaser
with two useless mouths. Do you catch on; thick-head? No, for you look
at me with a ferocious and stupefied air. I repeat that if I had been
obliged to buy the two children in one lot with you, or even if they had
been given to me to boot, in the market, like old Pierce-Skin, my first
care would have been to have put you up for sale without them. Do you
understand at last, double and triple block that you are?"

At last I did understand; heretofore I had not dreamed of such
refinement of torture in slavery. To think that my two children, if
alive, might be sold, I know not where, or to whom, and taken far from
me! I had not thought it possible. My heart swelled with grief. So great
was my suffering that I almost supplicated the "horse-dealer." I said to
him:

"You are deceiving me. What can my children do? Who would wish to buy
such poor little things, so young? useless mouths--as you said
yourself?"

"Oh, those who carry on the trade in children have a separate and
assured patronage, especially if t