A long-continued cry of indignation followed this defiance, and arms began to glitter in the sun among the crowd like flashes of lightning. The chiefs, however, imposed silence, and held the crowd in check. Then advancing in concert to the entrance of the bridge, one of them spoke thus:--"What do you want? Do you not belong to our tribes? Have you not flocks, and wives, and children born in the valley? What conditions do you aim to impose upon us--us who are your equals? Speak! What can you ask for more than you already possess? What wrongs have been done you? Why bring with you men who are strangers to the country, whom we do not know, and who have no claim to an interest among us?" "Answer him, answer him, Sigild," said all the warriors with one voice. Sigild advanced. He was a handsome young man, a native of the valley, tall and slight, with a mild look, and a beard just appearing; his breast covered with a small bronze cuirass which glittered in the sun: his white arms were bare, and adorned with bracelets of gold. He disdained a helmet, and his blonde hair, fastened at the top of his head with a long golden pin, fell down over his back; _chases_[1] wrought in bright colours covered his legs; his waist was girt with a kind of scarf, which was gracefully thrown back over the shoulder and left arm. A narrow buckler and a sword hung at his side. He smiled, made a sign with his hand as if requesting silence, and said:--"Friends and brethren, we are all free--all of the same blood; we ought to remain united to conquer those who desire to plunder or to enslave us. Consider, however, that you have among you the élite of the warriors who have conquered powerful nations, and have spread the renown of the Gallic name beyond the mountains. Many have died in battle; but do not those who have returned to you after so many trials, bringing, with them a rich booty and having acquired skill in arms, deserve some consideration from you? Inured to war and always ready to shed their blood, are they not more fitted to defend your hearths than men who have done nothing but tend cattle and till the soil? They do not, however, ask you to keep them in idleness, or to consider them as chiefs or masters; their only wish is to defend you. They know to what extent you are encompassed by rapacious and envious men, who, jealous of the prosperity of your valley, are cherishing the most sinister designs against you. They know this because they have seen many peoples of whose existence you do not dream, though they are close to your borders. Lulled by a prolonged security, you are not in a condition to resist a serious attack. Now these warriors--your relations, your brothers, your friends, of the same blood as yourselves--have been considering with painful anxiety this state of repose in which you are living. They have, therefore, formed the intention--they, as men of war, to occupy the camp, to fortify it