well knowing that after the initiation of the various youth the warrior would be restless. It is of these same youth that there is something curious to tell, a thing beginning in mere love of the young for any wild performance and the doing of that which the elders might look upon as childish or unmanly, but which here had, in the end, a great result. I have said that we had horses as well as horned cattle, but the horses, like the cattle, were for food, and were rarely mounted, since the forest was scarce the place in which they might be used with freedom. It was counted almost effeminate in a man to ride when his strong legs should be equal to any journey. The youth took small account of this; lightly they held to elder views, and so a company of some score or more of them had contrived to capture and tame to riding a number of horses, performing some fine exploits with them in a broad clearing at a safe distance from the village and from all surveillance. They rode well, guiding the horses with their thonged bridles and flourishing their long spears, as they had heard did the horsemen of the Gauls, and I, who, because I had no family of my own, was somewhat of a friend and, it may be, a too lenient mentor to them, felt a certain pride in their performance and had no notion of betraying them. Indeed, I felt that I somewhat aided and abetted them, and of this last I had no regret. So drifted we up to the time of the first falling of the leaves. The days passed and the autumn grew and the hunters were out and the boatmen were on the rivers, fishing them even to the coast with their nets of woven marsh grass, and soon we would have great store of meat and fish for storing. It was time for the yearly salt making, so a small company of the youth were sent ahead to the spring by the marshes to prepare for the coming of such older ones as should direct the boiling and other labour to be done. All were engaged in the preparation, and the band departed shoutingly at dawn, for to the spring it was a full half day’s journey. That night the hunters came from the chase vaunting and heavy laden, for they had met with great good fortune, having surrounded and slain an aurochs of huge size, so adding at once no little meat for the salting. Never was clan in better mood than was ours on that night of much eating and drinking by the tired though noisy hunters. Well into the night the revelry continued, when there came that which changed the nature of the feasters. There were short, dull cries from the outside, and then staggered into hall two of the youth who had gone with the little company to the salt spring. One was bloody of head and face, and each was, at first, too scant of breath to tell his tale. It soon came, however, and was such as to make each warrior seize upon and brandish aloft his weapons and swear an oath as to what would be the deadly happenings of the morrow!