t we are not making a retreat. Me in a
litter!" he growled. "Just you wait a bit, and I shall be showing that
I have got a little fighting left in me."

Serge proved his words the very next day, when, after many hours'
marching painfully in the ranks, pretty close to where his young master
had been appointed a junior officer, and been received by the men with
cheers, a desperate attack was made upon this, the advance guard, by a
perfect crowd of fierce Gallic warriors made up of the scattered
remnants of the beaten army, who came down upon the marching cohort like
the sea upon some massive rock. So fierce was the onslaught that though
the Roman ranks remained comparatively unbroken, they were pressed back
by the sheer weight of their enemies, but only to recoil, and as they
advanced to recover their lost ground, it was over the bodies of some of
their wounded men, and to Marcus' horror he found himself once more
called upon to dash forward to another's help. This time, however, it
was not blindly and in the dusk, for a shiver of dread ran through him,
knowing how crippled his old companion was, when he saw that Serge was
one of those who had been unable to keep his place in the rank when the
Romans were driven back, and that now he was defending himself and
striving to hold his own against the attack of three of the Gauls.
Tearing off his helmet, as if it were an incumbrance, and making his
short sword flash through the air, Marcus rushed to his old companion's
help, but too late to save him being hurled heavily to the ground,
while, ready as he was to contend against ordinary weapons, this
barbaric method of attack confused and puzzled him. One of his
half-nude enemies made as if to flinch from a coming blow, and then
sprang up, hurling something through the air, and in an instant the boy
found himself entangled in the long cord of strips of hide, which was
dragged tight above his arms and crippled the blow he would have struck,
while as he was jerked round the Gaul's companions flung themselves upon
his back, and for the moment he was prisoner in his turn.

The struggle that followed was brief, for the blade Marcus wielded was
that in which old Serge had taken pride, feeling as he did that his
master's son should be armed with a weapon that was keenest of the keen.
Fortunately, too, the aim of the enemy was to make a prisoner of the
well-caparisoned young Roman, and not a slay, so that Marcus, in spite
of the wa