tribes alone opposed them at their first landing, and he was
betrayed and abandoned by the tribes on the north of the Thames. It
has been the same thing ever since. We fight piecemeal; and while
the Romans hurl their whole strength against one tribe the others
look on with folded hands. Who aided the Trinobantes when the
Romans defeated them and established themselves on that hill? No
one. They will eat Britain up bit by bit."

"Then you like them no better for having lived among them, Beric?"

"I like them more, but I fear them more. One cannot be four years
among them, as I was, without seeing that in many respects we might
copy them with advantage. They are a great people. Compare their
splendid mansions and their regular orderly life, their manners and
their ways, with our rough huts, and our feasts, ending as often
as not with quarrels and brawls. Look at their arts, their power
of turning stone into lifelike figures, and above all, the way in
which they can transfer their thoughts to white leaves, so that
others, many many years hence, can read them and know all that was
passing, and what men thought and did in the long bygone. Truly it
is marvellous."

"You are half Romanized, Beric," his companion said roughly.

"I think not," the other said quietly; "I should be worse than
a fool had I lived, as I have done, a hostage among them for four
years without seeing that there is much to admire, much that we
could imitate with advantage, in their life and ways; but there
is no reason because they are wiser and far more polished, and in
many respects a greater people than we, that they should come here