nations."

"I am accustomed to be laughed at," Malchus said smiling; "I have two
sisters at home, and, whatever respect women may pay to their lords
in Carthage, I suppose that neither there nor anywhere else have girls
respect for their brothers."

The music at this moment struck up, the harpers began a song which they
had composed in honour of the occasion, the tribesmen fell into their
ranks again, and Allobrigius placed himself at their head. Malchus
dismounted, and, leading his horse, walked by the side of Brunilda, who,
with the rest of the women, walked on the flanks of the column on its
way back to the village.

The next three months passed very pleasantly to Malchus. In the day
he hunted the boar, the bear, and the wolf among the mountains with
Allobrigius; of an evening he sat by the fire and listened to the songs
of the harpers or to the tales of the wars and wanderings of the Gaulish
tribes, or himself told the story of Carthage and Tyre and the wars of
the former with the Romans, described the life and manners of the great
city, or the hunting of the lion in the Libyan deserts.

While his listeners wondered at the complex life and strange arts and
magnificence of Carthage, Malchus was struck with the simple existence,
the warm family ties, the honest sincerity, and the deep love of freedom
of the Gauls. When Brunilda and her daughter sighed with envy at the
thought of the luxuries and pleasures of the great city, he told them
that they would soon weary of so artificial an existence, and that
Carthage, with its corruption, its ever present dread of the rising of
one class against another, its constant fear of revolt from the people
it had enslaved, its secret tribunals, its oppression and tyranny, had
little which need be envied by the free tribes of Gaul.

"I grant," he said, "that you would gain greater comfort by adopting
something of our civilization. You might improve your dwellings,
hangings round your walls would keep out the bitter winds, well made
doors are in winter very preferable to the skins which hang at your
entrance, and I do think that a Carthaginian cook might, with advantage,
give lessons to the tribes as to preparations of food; but beyond that I
think that you have the best of it."

"The well built houses you speak of," Allobrigius said, "have their
advantages, but they have their drawbacks. A people who once settle down
into permanent abodes have taken the first step towards losin