he fountain basin, drink deeply,
and then stand up in the darkness to look round.

"Good-bye, old home!" he said, aloud, and his voice broke a little; but
it hardened again the next moment, as he said, quickly:

"No, it isn't home now that he has gone away. I am coming, father, and
you must forgive me when we meet, for I cannot--I dare not stay."

There was the quick, sharp tramp of the boy's feet as he crossed the
stone-paved court, with the arms he wore, and those he carried, making a
slight crackling and clinking noise, while his bronze protected feet
made his steps sound heavier than of old.

The next minute he was fighting against the desire to turn and look
back, and, conquering, for he felt that it would be weak, he strode off
with quickened pace away along the track that had been taken by his
father and Caius Julius hours before.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

REAL WAR.

It was all one blur of mystery to Marcus as he tramped through the
forest, following the slightly beaten road. Time seemed to be no more,
and distance not to count. Everything was dreamy and strange,
over-ruled by the one great thought that he was going to reach his
father somewhere, somehow, in the future, when he would reprove him
bitterly and forgive him, but he would never turn him back; and,
governed by these thoughts, he went on, almost unconscious of everything
else.

The way was sometimes desolate, sometimes grand, with mountain and
forest, over which and through which the roughly beaten track always
led, for it was not one of the carefully constructed military roads that
his great people afterwards formed through the length and breadth of
their land.

The rocks amongst the mountains afforded resting places; beneath the
grand trees of the forest there was mossy carpet, upon which he slept;
there were trickling rills and natural basins where crystal water gave
him drink, or places where he could bathe his hot and tired feet, while
now and again he came upon the rude hut of some goat-herd or Pagan who,
for a small coin, gladly supplied him with coarse black bread and a bowl
of freshly-drawn goat's milk.

And this went on, as he could recall when he thought, day after day,
night after night, if he tried to think; but that was rarely, for he had
no time. The one great thought of finding his father mastered all else,
as, still in what continued a strange, blurred, adventurous dream, he
went on and on, seeming to grow more vigorous and