’My Cohort, I was told, lay at Hunno, where the Great North Road runs through the Wall into the Province of Valentia.’  Parnesius laughed scornfully.  ’The Province of Valentia!  We followed the road, therefore, into Hunno town, and stood astonished.  The place was a fair—­a fair of peoples from every corner of the Empire.  Some were racing horses:  some sat in wine-shops:  some watched dogs baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks fight.  A boy not much older than myself, but I could see he was an officer, reined up before me and asked what I wanted.

‘"My station,” I said, and showed him my shield.’  Parnesius held up his broad shield with its three X’s like letters on a beer-cask.

’"Lucky omen!” said he.  “Your Cohort’s the next tower to us, but they’re all at the cock-fight.  This is a happy place.  Come and wet the Eagles.”  He meant to offer me a drink.

’"When I’ve handed over my men,” I said.  I felt angry and ashamed.

’"Oh, you’ll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense,” he answered.  “But don’t let me interfere with your hopes.  Go on to the Statue of Roma Dea.  You can’t miss it.  The main road into Valentia!” and he laughed and rode off.  I could see the statue not a quarter of a mile away, and there I went.  At some time or other the Great North Road ran under it into Valentia; but the far end had been blocked up because of the Picts, and on the plaster a man had scratched, “Finish!” It was like marching into a cave.  We grounded spears together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel of the arch, but none came.  There was a door at one side painted with our number.  We prowled in, and I found a cook asleep, and ordered him to give us food.  Then I climbed to the top of the Wall, and looked out over the Pict country, and I—­thought,’ said Parnesius.  ’The bricked-up arch with “Finish!” on the plaster was what shook me, for I was not much more than a boy.’

‘What a shame!’ said Una.  ’But did you feel happy after you’d had a good——­’ Dan stopped her with a nudge.

‘Happy?’ said Parnesius.  ’When the men of the Cohort I was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, their birds under their arms, and asked me who I was?  No, I was not happy; but I made my new Cohort unhappy too ...  I wrote my Mother I was happy, but, oh, my friends’—­he stretched arms over bare knees—­’I would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered through my first months on the Wall.  Remember this:  among the officers was scarcely one, except myself (and I thought I had lost the favour of Maximus, my General), scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or folly.  Either he had killed a man, or taken money, or insulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the Gods, and so had been sent to the Wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear.  And the men were as the officers.  Remember, also, that the Wall was manned by every breed and race in the Empire.  No two towers spoke the same tongue, or worshipped the same Gods.  In one thing only we were all equal.  No matter what arms we had used before we came to the Wall, on the Wall we were all archers, like the Scythians.  The Pict cannot run away from the arrow, or crawl under it.  He is a bowman himself. He knows!’