The pages glow with color as the brilliant changeful vision of life in Carthage, under the Vandal rule, rises from the mists of the vanished centuries, and the characters which people this ancient world are no less varied. The noble king, the subtle Roman, Verus, the gallant warrior, Zazo, Hilda, the beautiful, fearless Ostrogoth Princess, the wily Justinian, his unscrupulous Empress, Theodora, and their brave, impetuous general, Belisarius, are clearly portrayed; and, underlying the whole drama, surges the fierce warfare between Roman Catholic and Arian, while the place and the period in which the scenes of the romance are laid, both comparatively little known, lend a peculiar charm and freshness to the gifted author's narrative. MARY J. SAFFORD. HIGHFIELD COTTAGE, DOUGLAS HILL, MAINE, August 24, 1903. THE SCARLET BANNER _BOOK ONE_ BEFORE THE WAR CHAPTER I TO CORNELIUS CETHEGUS CÆSARIUS, A FRIEND: I send these notes to you rather than to any other man. Why? First of all, because I know not where you are, so the missive will probably be lost. Doubtless that would be the best thing which could happen, especially for the man who would then be spared reading these pages! But it will also be well for me that these lines should lie--or be lost--in some other place than here. For here in Constantinople they may fall into certain dainty little well-kept hands, which possibly might gracefully wave an order to cut off my head--or some other useful portion of my anatomy to which I have been accustomed since my birth. But if I send these truths hence to the West, they will not be so easily seized by those dangerous little fingers which discover every secret in the capital, whenever they search in earnest. Whether you are living in your house at the foot of the Capitol, or with the Regent at Ravenna, I do not know; but I shall despatch this to Rome, for toward Rome my thoughts fly, seeking Cethegus. You may ask derisively why I write what is so dangerous. Because I must! I praise--constrained by fear--so many people and things with my lips that I condemn in my heart, that I must at least confess the truth secretly in writing. Well, I might write out my rage, read it, and then throw the pages into the sea, you say. But--and this is the other reason for this missive--I am vain, too. The cleverest man I know must read, must praise what I write, must be aware that I was not so foolish as to believe all I extolled to be praiseworthy. Later perhaps I can use the notes,--if they are not lost,--when at some future day I write the true history of the strange things I have experienced and shortly shall undergo.