"I thank you for your counsel. I cannot follow it. You have given up your people; therefore you are drifting on the sea of the world like a blade of straw. I was, I am King of the Vandals. I will not serve the unjust foe of my people. God, so I believe, commands me and the remnant of the Vandals to hold out even now. He can save me if He so wills. I can write no more. The misery surrounding me benumbs my thoughts. Good Fara, send me a loaf of bread; a delicate boy, the son of a dead noble, is lying very ill, in the fever caused by starvation. He begs, he pleads, he shrieks for bread--it tears one's heart-strings! For a long time not one of us has tasted bread. "And a sponge dipped in water; my eyes, inflamed by watching and weeping, burn painfully. "And a harp. I have composed a dirge upon our fate, which I would fain sing to the accompaniment of the harp." Fara granted the three requests,--the harp could be obtained only by sending to the nearest city,--but he guards even more closely than before the "Mountain of Misery," as our people call it. CHAPTER XIX Dull, misty, and gray, a cold damp morning in early March dawned upon the mountain. The sun could not penetrate the dense clouds. The ancient city of Medenus had long since been abandoned by its Carthaginian and Roman founders and builders. Most of the houses, constructed of stone from the mountain, stood deserted and ruinous. Nomad Moors used the few which still had roofs as places of refuge in winter. The largest structure was the former basilica. Here the King and his household had found shelter. A scanty fire of straw and fagots was burning in the centre on the stone floor. But it sent forth more smoke than heat, for the wood was wet, and the damp fog penetrated everywhere through the cracks in the walls, through the holes in the roof, pressing down the slowly rising yellowish-gray smoke till, trailing and gliding along the cold wall, it sought other means of escape through the entrance, whose folding-doors were missing. In the semicircular space back of the apses coverlets and skins had been spread upon the marble floor. Here sat Gibamund, hammering upon his much-dented shield, while Hilda had laid the scarlet standard across her lap, and was mending it. "Many, many arrows have pierced thee, ancient, storm-tried banner. And this gaping rent here,--it was probably a sword-stroke. But thou must still hold together to the end."