s magnate, who, although he
had been born in Como and was said to love his Como villas better
than any of his other houses, yet had about him the awful remoteness
of Rome. Of course she could never be admitted to his presence. She
could only store up a few more coins each year and trust to the gods.

With a start she realised that to-day was the festival of Fors Fortuna.
In the hurried morning she had forgotten to remind Marcus of his
prayers. In the days when the farm had been sure of the largest
harvest in the neighbourhood this summer festival had been
brilliantly celebrated, and as long as Marcus's father had lived the
family had still cherished the quaint rites and the merrymaking of
a holiday especially dear to the common people of both city and
country. But in these later years there had been neither time nor
money for any fetes. Piety, however, was still left, and it was
characteristic of the scrupulousness persisting in Marcus's mother
through all the demoralising experiences of poverty that, after she
had finished the heavier tasks, she should set to work to mark the
religious day by a freshly washed cloth upon the table, with a bowl
of red roses picked from the bush that grew by the doorway, and a
gala supper of new-laid eggs, lentil soup and goat's milk cheese.

In the meantime Marcus had been having adventures. His pasture was
on a grassy plateau of a mountain slope, edged by heavy green
cypresses and dotted with holm-oaks. In the woods above him chestnut
and walnut trees showed vividly against the silver olives. Below
stretched the shining waters of the Larian Lake. Here, while the
sheep browsed happily, he was wont to feed his little soul on dreams.
Sitting to-day where he could look out to a distant horizon, his blue
tunic seeming to insert into the varied greens about him a bit of
colour from sky or lake, he dug his toes into the soft grass and for
the hundredth time tried to think out how he could attain his heart's
desire. He knew exactly what that was. He wanted to go to school!
If anyone had tried to find out why, he would have discovered in the
boy's mind a tangled mass of hopes--hopes of helping his mother and
owning once more their big fields and vineyards, of going to Rome
and coming home again, rich and famous. But to any glorious future
school was the portal, of that he was sure. The nearest boys' school
was in Milan, and to Milan he must go. The golden fleece on the borders
of strange seas,