the dealers to remain within the fortifications at night, but the shops were tenanted by day, and did a thriving business, not only with the soldiers, but with the Britons of the neighbourhood, who found the camp a convenient resort, where they could market to advantage, besides gossiping to their hearts’ content. The relations between the soldiers and their native neighbours were indeed friendly in the extreme. The legion had had its headquarters in the camp of the Great Harbour for many generations, though it had occasionally gone on foreign service. Lately, too, the policy which had recruited the British legion with soldiers from the Continent, had been relaxed, partly from carelessness, partly because it was necessary to fill up the ranks as could best be done, and there was but little choice of men. Thus service became very much an inheritance. The soldiers married British women, and their children, growing up, became soldiers in turn. Many recruits still came from Gaul, Spain, and the mouth of the Rhine, and elsewhere, but quite as many of the troops were by this time, in part or in whole, British. Another change which the three centuries and a half since Vespasian’s time had brought about was in religion. The temple of Mars, which had stood near the headquarters, and where the legate had been accustomed to take the auspices,(6) was now a Christian Church, duly served by a priest of British birth. About a couple of hours later in the day a shout of “The Emperor! the Emperor!” was raised in the camp, and the soldiers, flocking out from the mess-tents in which most of them were sitting, lined in a dense throng the avenue which led from the chief gate to headquarters. Gratianus, who was followed by a few officers of superior rank and a small escort of cavalry, rode slowly between the lines of soldiers. His reception was not as hearty as he had expected to find. He had, as the soldiers had hinted, made vast exertions to raise a sum of money in Londinium—then, as now, the wealthiest municipality in the island. Himself a native of the place, and connected with some of its richest citizens, he had probably got together more than any one else would have done in like circumstances. But all his persuasions and promises, even his offer of twenty per cent. interest, had not been able to extract from the Londinium burghers the full sum that was required; and the soldiers, who the day before would have loudly proclaimed that they would be thankful for the smallest instalment, were now almost furious because they had not been paid in full. A few shouts of “Hail, Cæsar! Hail, Gratianus! Hail, Britannicus!” greeted him on the road to his quarters; but these came from the front lines only, and chiefly from the centurions and deputy-centurions, while the great body of the soldiers maintained an ominous silence, sometimes broken by a sullen murmur.