ss. Perhaps you do not care to hear the rest?'

'Go on,' said AEnone, shuddering with a sickening apprehension of what
was to come.

'Well, the first day his oldest child was slain, and the body sent to
him; and the next day the second one slain, and in like manner sent to
him; and so on until but his wife and one child were left. Then he came
in and gave himself up.'

'And this brave man--fighting for his country--you have made a slave
of!' exclaimed AEnone, impetuously. 'He has been stripped of his family
one by one, and now you would place him in the arena, to be the victim
of wild beasts, or at the best, of other slaves!'

'What else would you wish? The man is of a warlike nature; and it were
better for him to bravely contend for his life in the presence of the
emperor himself, than ignominiously to wear it out in the base labor of
the quarries. And I will tell you what I meant to have done. I know
where are his wife and remaining child, with whom he yesterday entered
Rome; and if in the amphitheatre he had won the victory for me, I would
have restored them to him and given him his freedom besides. But all
that is past now. In the heat of the moment I forgot him, and suffered
this drunken dog, Bassus, to take his choice; and he has had too good an
eye for what is valuable not to select the Rhodian. Strange, indeed,
that I should have been so careless. But throughout all, I never dreamed
that his taste would lead him to do more than choose some slight-built
boy, who could assist him in his trade. Once, indeed, I feared for the
moment that he would select amiss, and take a rarely precious dwarf,
whom, both for his appearance and for his knowledge of armor, I had
reserved as a gift for your father; and when that danger was past, I
breathed freer, not calculating upon any further mischance.'

AEnone remained silent. Ready as she was at all times to give her utmost
sympathy to her husband for the slightest annoyance which he might
experience, it seemed to her now that his complaining was puerile and
unjust, so utterly had the sense of his disappointment been swallowed
up, in her thoughts, by the real and tragic woe of the Rhodian captive.
Finding day after day his dead children laid at his very door--then
separated rudely from all who were left--and in the end brought chained
into the arena, and obliged to fight to the death for the pleasure of
his conquerors, and perhaps against his own countrymen: why should such