go with me to him."




Chapter XXIII

A PIERCING pain roused Vinicius. At the first moment he could not
understand where he was, nor what was happening. He felt a roaring in
his head, and his eyes were covered as if with mist. Gradually, however,
his consciousness returned, and at last he beheld through that mist
three persons bending over him. Two he recognized: one was Ursus, the
other the old man whom he had thrust aside when carrying off Lygia. The
third, an utter stranger, was holding his left arm, and feeling it from
the elbow upward as far as the shoulder-blade. This caused so terrible
a pain that Vinicius, thinking it a kind of revenge which they were
taking, said through his set teeth, "Kill me!" But they paid no
apparent heed to his words, just as though they heard them not, or
considered them the usual groans of suffering. Ursus, with his anxious
and also threatening face of a barbarian, held a bundle of white cloth
torn in long strips. The old man spoke to the person who was pressing
the arm of Vinicius,--"Glaucus, art thou certain that the wound in the
head is not mortal?"

"Yes, worthy Crispus," answered Glaucus. "While serving in the fleet as
a slave, and afterward while living at Naples, I cured many wounds, and
with the pay which came to me from that occupation I freed myself and my
relatives at last. The wound in the head is slight. When this one
[here he pointed to Ursus with his head] took the girl from the young
man, he pushed him against the wall; the young man while falling put out