not but feel that he had
fallen far in the estimation of his general.

IX.

HOME.

The Appian Way was still safe, even from the chance of Numidian foray,
and it was along its lava-paved level that the long convoy of sick and
wounded writhed slowly northward that afternoon.

Half reclining in the rude chariot, each jolt of which brought agony to
his injured shoulder, Sergius watched, with far deeper pain than that
of body, the last troop of allied horse winding up the pass toward
Allifae: the rear-guard of Rome's line of march. Then he fell to
brooding upon his fate, while the night followed the day and the day
the night, and still the dreary, groaning caravan dragged on, resting
only during the heated hours.

On, over the Liris at Minturnae, upward, over the mountains behind
Tarracina and descending again into the Pontine plain; through the
shady groves of Arician ilex that crown the Alban Hills, down to
Bovillae, and then away across the Campagna to Rome--a marvel of deep
cuttings through the hills,--a marvel of giant superstructures over
valleys,--the Appian, the Queen of Ways.

There were long, green ridges now, swelling from the plain and breaking
away into little rocky cliffs tufted with wild fig trees: sluggish
streams wound down from the east where, far away, loomed the
snow-tipped summits of Apennine, while toward the west the sky
reflected a brighter light from the sea that glittered beneath it.

At last the eyes of the vanguard of weary wayfarers could descry,
through the morning mists, the crowned cluster of hills that was to be
a crown to all the world. Nearer they came and yet nearer, through the
vineyards and cornfields of the Campagna--the southern Campagna teeming
with its herds of mouse-coloured cattle, whose great, stupid eyes were
only less stupidly beautiful than those of the rustics that watched
over their grazings.

And now wounds and sickness were, for the moment, forgotten, as man
pointed out to man this and that landmark of home: temples on this hill
and on that; Diana on the Aventine, the hill of the people; Jupiter
Stator on the Palatine; the grim mass of the citadel above the rock of
Tarpeia; the great quadriga that surmounted the greatest fane of
all--the house of Capitoline Jove. To the right of these were the
clustered oaks of the Caelian Mount, while, farthest away, but highest
of all, the white banner fluttering from the heights of Janiculum told
them that the city wa