At last a couple of stallions neighed, a weapon clanked outside from the direction of the fires, and directly thereafter a light, almost inaudible footstep came toward the centre of the camp,--toward the "Lion Tent." Suddenly it paused; a slender young man stooped to the ground before the entrance. "What? Are you lying in front of the tent, grandfather?" he asked in astonishment. "Are you asleep?" "I was watching," a low voice answered. "I should have ventured to rouse you. There is a fateful star in the heavens. I saw it appear when I was keeping the eastern fire-watch. As soon as I was relieved, I hastened to you. The gods are sending a warning! But youth does not understand their signs; you do, wise ancestor. Look yonder, to the right--the right of the last palm. Don't you see it?" "I saw it long ago. I have expected the sign for many nights, ay, for years." Awe and a slight sense of fear thrilled the youth. "For years? You knew what would happen in the heavens? You are very wise, O Cabaon." "Not I. My grandfather told my father, and he repeated the marvel to me. It was more than a hundred years ago. The fair-faced strangers came from the North across the sea in many ships, led by that King of terrors with whose name our women still silence unruly children." "Genseric!" said the youth, softly; his tone expressed both hate and horror. "At that time, from the same direction as the ships, a terrible star mounted into the heavens--blood-red, like a flaming scourge with many hundred thongs; it swung menacingly over our country and people. And my grandfather, after he had seen the terrible war-king in the harbor of Tsocium, said to my father and to our tribe: 'Unfasten the camels! Bridle the noble racers, and set forth. Go southward, into the scorching bosom of the protecting Mother! This King of Battles and his war-loving nation are what the terrible star announced. For many, many years, and tens of years, all who oppose them will be lost; the armies of Rome and the galleys of Constantinople will be swept away by these giants from the North, like the clouds which seek to oppose the star.' And so it came to pass. The sons of our tribe, though they would far rather have discharged their long arrows at the fair-haired giants, obeyed the old man's counsel, and we escaped into the sheltering desert. Bonifacius, the Roman General, fell. Our ancestor had foretold it in the prophetic saying: 'G will destroy B. But,' he added, 'some day, after more than a hundred years, a star will rise in the east, and then B will overthrow G. Other tribes of our race who, with the imperial troops, tried to resist the invaders, were mowed down like them by Genseric, the son of darkness. And when they came howling to our tents, raising the death-wail, and summoned us to a war of vengeance, my grandfather and afterwards my father refused, saying: 'Not yet! They cannot yet be conquered. More than two or three