The earthquake had passed by, and become a thing of memory. Nineteen of the towers of Constantinople had fallen; the walls of Azimantium lay broken and destroyed; and on the day which was to have lighted the marriage torch for Honoria and Menenius, the lover lay, slowly recovering from the evening of the earthquake, and the beautiful girl watched him with glad, yet anxious eyes. The father of Menenius, too, stood beside him, and marked the reviving glow in his son's cheek with joy, although there was a deep and thoughtful shadow on his brow, which brightened into something of triumph and of hope, as his eye ran over the bold and swelling muscles of his frame, and thought that but a few days more would restore that frame to all its pristine vigour. The triumph and the hope were those of a true son of ancient Greece, for they were kindled and inspired by the proud thought that the energetic strength of mind and body which were no longer united in himself; would, in his son, prove the safeguard of his country. He had news to tell which might well have quelled the feeble spirits of that degenerate age, but Menenius was a child of Azimantium, and knew not fear, even though crushed, and sick, and wounded. He had borne the cautions of the leech, and the restraint of a sick chamber, with somewhat of impatience and disdain; but when his father told him that the false Bishop of Margus had opened the gates of that city to the barbarian Attila, the destroyer of arts, the waster of empires, the scourge of God; that unnumbered myriads of the Huns were pouring over the frontier barriers of the eastern empire; that Sirnium and Sardica, Ratiaria and Naissus, had fallen, and that but a few days more would see the blood-gorged savages beneath the rocks of Azimantium, Menenius became docile as a lamb to all that might hasten his recovery. Honoria's cheek grew pale, and her lip forgot its smile, but not a word of fear was breathed upon the air, and her dark, dark eye shot out rays of more intense and brilliant light, as she gazed on each piece of her lover's armour, and scanned them jealously for fault or flaw. * * * * * * * * * * * * There was a cry through the whole of Greece, "They come! They come!" Over the fields, through the valleys, on the mountains; from voice to voice, and castle to castle, and city to city, the cry went forth, "Death to the nations! They come They come! Vultures, prepare to feast! They come! They come!" All fell down before them or fled, and those who timidly spoke but the name of war, died by their own hearths. Fortress after fortress, town after town, was attacked and taken, and plundered and destroyed; not one stone was left upon another, and captivity and the sword shared the children of the land between them; and still went on the cry, "They come! They come! Vultures, prepare! They come! They come!"