"I should like to go into the woods," the girl said earnestly, "I
am tired of this town. My father says he will take me with him some
day when he goes west, but so far I have seen nothing except this
town and Verulamium, and the country was all just as it is here,
fields and cultivation. We could see the forests in the distance,
but that was all. My father says, that if we went west, we should
travel for miles through the forest and should sleep in tents, but
that we cannot do it till everything is quiet and peaceful. Oh,
Beric! I do wish the Britons would not be always fighting."

Beric smiled. "The British girls, Berenice, say they wish the Romans
would not be always fighting."

"It is very troublesome," she said pettishly. "I should like
everyone to be friends, and then there would be no need to have so
many soldiers in Britain, and perhaps the emperor would order our
legions home. Father says that we ought to look upon this as home
now, for that the legion may remain here for years and years; but
he said the other day that he thought that if everything was quiet
here he should, when I am sixteen years old, obtain leave from the
governor, and go back to Rome for two or three years, and I think,
though he has not said so outright, that he will perhaps retire
and settle there."

"It would be much the best for you," Beric said earnestly. "I should be
sorry, because you have been very kind to me, and I should grieve
were you to leave me altogether; but there may be trouble here
again some day, and I think it would be far better for you to be
back in Rome, where you would have all the pleasures and delights
of the great capital, and live in ease and comfort, without the