"I know it, Ebarvin. And," he asked craftily, as if in reproach, while his gray eye blazed with a searching light, "and yet you betrayed him?" The man gripped his short sword angrily. "Betray? I accuse him openly, after I have often warned him loyally, after threatening that I would tell you all. He laughed at it; he would not believe me." "And why do you do it? You have loved him." "Why? And you ask that--you, who taught it to me, to us all? True, it was not you alone--first necessity! Why? Because only this league of the Alemanni can save us from ruin, from the shame of bondage. Why? Oh, Duke, the oaths with which you bound us years ago, before the ash of Odin, are terrible. Ebarvin will not forswear himself; I will not, a perjured man, drift through endless nights down the horrible river of Hel among corpses, serpents, and swords. And I have learned through a long life that we must stand together, or the Romans will destroy us province by province. Oh, I would slay my own son if, disobedient to the Duke and the Council of the people, he tried to burst our league asunder." Up sprang the old chieftain; his eye flashed with delight. Raising the spear aloft with his left hand, he struck the right one on the clansman's shoulder: "I thank you for those words, Ebarvin! And I thank thee, thou Mighty One in the clouds! If such a spirit lives in the Alemanni, the league will never be sundered." CHAPTER XXII. It was really as Zercho the bondman had believed: Bissula had become the captive, not of Ausonius, but another; and his captive she remained. To the extreme surprise, nay, barely repressed indignation of the Prefect of Gaul, the younger man had asserted his claim according to the rights of war. Ausonius had no claims whatever to the prisoner; that was clear. His nephew undoubtedly might have raised them, and at first he did make the attempt. But he grew strangely silent when the Tribune--scarcely in absolute harmony with the truth--said in his uncle's presence: "The girl had escaped again. I was the first to catch her finally. Shall I call her, that she may tell you the whole story herself?" Herculanus, with a venomous glance, left the tent.