liquor into his mouth. His requital was a pistol shot in the shoulder
from the treacherous Swede. 'Rascal,' he cried, 'I would have befriended
you, and you would murder me in return! Now I will punish you. I would
have given you the whole bottle; but now you shall have only half.' And
drinking off half himself, he gave the rest to the Swede. The king,
hearing the story, sent for the burgher, and asked him how he came to
spare the life of such a rascal.

'Sire,' said the honest burgher, 'I could never kill a wounded enemy.'

'Thou meritest to be a noble,' the king said, and created him one
immediately, giving him as armorial bearings a wooden bottle pierced
with an arrow! The family only lately became extinct in the person of an
old maiden lady.




HOW ONE MAN HAS SAVED A HOST

B.C. 507



There have been times when the devotion of one man has been the saving
of an army. Such, according to old Roman story, was the feat of Horatius
Cocles. It was in the year B.C. 507, not long after the kings had been
expelled from Rome, when they were endeavoring to return by the aid of
the Etruscans. Lars Porsena, one of the great Etruscan chieftains, had
taken up the cause of the banished Tarquinius Superbus and his son