Ever since the preceding day the rain clouds, which had so long densely veiled the mountain peaks and hung in gray curtains to the shore of the lake, had grown lighter and lighter. Scattered fragments still floated over the forest; but the mists were dispersing from Sentis and Tödi. And before the sun of that day sank behind the wooded heights of the western shore, it burst through the cloud rack for the first time in a long while, illumining lake and country for a few minutes with a blood-red glow. The fishes leaped greedily after the flies which were sunning themselves in the beams and flew feebly, with damp wings, close to the surface of the water: then the radiant ball disappeared behind the long cloud curtain. The herons flew screaming from the rushes toward the land. The wind seemed to be rising. The clouds swept across the sky, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. The waves of the lake, obeying the former course of the wind, rolled in a direction opposite to the clouds above them. The Batavian mercenaries of the Lower Rhine were encamped outside of the northern gate of the camp, the Porta Prætoria, but a little toward the west. The centurion, a man about forty years old, long in the service of Rome, who was adorned with neck-chains and various badges of honor on his breast-plate bestowed for gallant deeds, was fanning the smoking fire, which they were loath to have die out in the cold damp woods. "There!" he muttered, "there it goes. I invoked both gods, Vulcan and Loki, in vain. Vulcan won't help me, because I am a Barbarian; Loki because I serve the Romans. We mercenaries no longer have any gods to aid us, because we belong to no nation." "Ha, Rignomer," laughed another in the group, a youth whose downy red beard was just beginning to grow, "I care for only one god among them all--the god of victory." "And he, Odin, is the very one who has deserted us, Brinno. Everywhere the Germans are conquering; that is, the peoples who are fighting against Rome, not we German mercenaries, who battle for the Cæsar. And in every conflict the men who bleed are we mercenaries." "Because these cunning Romans always put us in the place which is most severely threatened," Brinno cried angrily. "Because Odin is hostile to us," whispered the centurion. "We must no longer fight for Rome against the other Germans. He no longer wills it." "What do you mean by Germans? That's a word like Barbarians. The Romans invented it, not we. What do I care for these Alemanni? I am a Batavian; a Frank, if you prefer the name." "Yes, I do prefer it." "It's newer." "But stronger, because it is larger." "What do I care, I ask again, for these thick-skulled Suabians? I can hardly understand what they say."