countless German tribes are destroyed or until we have gained land enough to live upon. Not until then will there be peace." CHAPTER XXVIII. The words uttered by Adalo, evidently from sincere belief, and with warm feeling, produced a deep impression. Herculanus shrugged his shoulders scornfully. Saturninus, with a grave face, gazed silently into vacancy--into the future. After a long pause, Ausonius found words: "I have never seen that side of the question. Is this your wisdom?" "I say once more, it is the wisdom of our wise men; Duke Hariowald taught me. But the necessity of our people cries so loudly that even an inexperienced youth must understand its call: Land or destruction! So, in the name of our whole league of peoples, I ask (we Alemanni yield in courage to no race on earth), do you wish to gain us, our spears, forever against all your enemies, especially the false Franks, our evil neighbors and yours? Do you desire that?" The Romans listened intently; no one interrupted him in his appeal. "Well, there is a way, but only one." He paused. "Speak," urged Saturninus eagerly. "Vacate all the land which you still occupy but can hold only by constant fighting, the country northward between this lake and the right bank of the Rhine to where the Main empties into it beneath your stronghold of Mogontiacum, and all the region south of the lake to the chain of the Cisalpine region." "Insolent fellow!" shouted Herculanus. The other army leaders also did not spare words of wrath. "Not bad!" said Ausonius, smiling. Saturninus alone was silent; he was thinking how the great military hero, Aurelian, had given up, in a manner very similar to the way asked here, Trajan's proud conquest, Dacia, and thereby, for a long time, pacified the Goths on the Danube. But Adalo continued: "Do it, do it half voluntarily; do it for the most valuable compensation; for I tell you, it must be done very soon. Then it will be exacted without compensation in return. Do it willingly; for there is a proud prediction current among our people: the Alemanni will some day pasture their horses from the snows of the Alps to the woods of the Vosges." Ausonius rose indignantly. "Not another word! For our sole answer take to your people the old Roman war-cry, 'Woe to the Barbarians!'" "Woe to the Barbarians!" repeated the army leaders, with loud shouts. "Before I go," said the youth,--he struggled fiercely to subdue the agitation, the terrible anxiety which now sent a tremor through every limb,--"listen to another message. You have captured a daughter of our people." Six eyes were bent upon him with the keenest attention. "I am commissioned to ransom her." In spite of every effort to appear calm and cold his voice trembled. "Are you Bissula's relative? She has no brother," said Ausonius suspiciously. "Or her lover?" asked Herculanus.