.
Only a few bedrooms were used--the smallest and warmest--and the
great kitchen was the only living room. It had been large enough for
all the farm-servants to eat in and for the spinning and weaving of
the women. Now the family of three gathered lonesomely close to the
hearth when a rare fire was indulged in on stormy winter nights. The
only source of income were the few sheep and goats and hens. In the
old days great flocks of sheep on the farm had sent fleeces to Milan.
Now there were only enough to furnish lambs on feast days and
occasional fleeces to more prosperous neighbors. The few goats
provided the family with milk. Far oftener than anyone knew, in the
winters, they were in actual distress, lacking food and fuel.

But it was not her own hunger that burdened the nights of Marcus's
mother. In letting her old father-in-law be hungry she felt that she
was false to a trust. And her boy must be saved to a happier life
than his father's had been. He was eleven years old and must soon,
if ever, turn to something better than tending sheep in a lonely
pasture from sunrise till sunset. She did not let him know it,
thinking that he was too young to look beyond the passing days in
which he seemed able to find happiness, but she had laid aside every
year, heedless of the sacrifice, some little part of the scanty money
that came from the eggs and chickens. What she could do with it she
did not know. It grew so slowly. But there was always the hope that
some day Marcus would find it a full-grown treasure to face the world
with. When, seven years ago, the great Pliny had given to Como a fund
to educate freeborn orphans, she had thought bitterly that her baby
would be better off without her. Sometimes, since then, she had been
mad enough to think of trying to see Pliny when he came to the villa
which was nearest to her farm. He was there now. Stories of his
magnificent kindnesses were rife. His tenants were the most
contented in the country-side and his slaves were better treated than
many Roman citizens. He had given his old nurse a little farm to live
on and sent one of his freedmen to Egypt when he was threatened with
consumption. But she had never found the courage--she could not find
it now--to believe that he would care what happened to a child in
no way connected with him. His wealth, by no means the largest known
in his own circle, to her seemed appalling. The Emperor could not
have been more distant from her than thi