tamorphosis than ever Ovid dreamed.
Verses well up in my mind ceaselessly. Just listen!

"Nature had dowered Bissula with charms which the greatest of artists
Vainly to picture would strive. Doubtless to full many another
Justice he might do by use of the pigments of red and of white lead:
Coloring like hers, alas! will forever escape him, unless he
should paint
Her face with a lily's lustre, on which the breath of a rose
hath rested."

Ah, my friend, with the feelings that come to me, I am often ashamed of
the half century I bear with me. Fain would I sacrifice something to
Anteros--most willingly my gray hairs!

A short time ago the little maid amazed us all (Saturninus was even
more surprised than I; for I am already beginning to believe her almost
supernatural) by showing strategic insight. It was mentioned that while
making a tour on the southwestern wall I had saved her little hut from
burning, while our cohorts usually flung the torch with eager zeal into
the wooden houses of the Barbarians. Then Saturninus remarked that by
accident another building had been spared, a house with a lofty gable
roof rising on a hill farther toward the southwest. None of our
reconnoitring parties had marched in that direction. My nephew called
one of his men and ordered two of them to ride over the next day and
burn the dwelling down.

Suddenly the girl, with flashing eyes, cried: "How stupid!" and
laughed. Courtesy is not her favorite virtue, and she and my nephew
waste little love on each other. "How stupid!" she repeated, "The
building is very solid, the fence inclosing it very high; it is almost
a citadel like your camp here; and it is between you and the lake--to
which you must fly if my people come. You could fortify yourselves
there again, if you are forced to leave here as the fox darts from its
burrow."

Herculanus laughed sneeringly; but Saturninus cast a glance from the
top of the wall to that hill and the lofty building, and said in the
quiet tone which quells contradiction: "I myself had resolved to have
the dwelling burned to-morrow. But the child is right. The solid house
will not be burned, but perhaps, later, occupied--when the ships
arrive."

If those ships would only come! The eager Tribune is fairly consumed
with impatience for action. Already he has gone across the lake
repeatedly in a wretched rotting boat belonging to the Barbarians,
which we found hidden among the thickest growth of