men breathed freely under the good Trajan.  He was still full of old fears, pathetically unable to grasp the joy of this tranquillity, which, like recreative sunshine, penetrated to every corner of the exhausted empire.  Nor, in fretting over the absence of his son, did he remember the brave fight that he had made for a livelihood as a muleteer in the Alps just above Como, nor the manner, almost heroic, of his death.

The burden fell upon Marcus’s young mother.  It was no wonder that her eyes were always tired, her hands rough and red, and her shoulders no longer straight.  The actual farmstead had been left to them, but its former comfort now imposed only a heavy load.  Once the servants had been almost as numerous as in the great villas along the lake.  There had been stables for oxen and horses and sheep, lofts full of hay and corn, spacious tool-rooms, store-rooms for olive oil and fruits and wine, hen-yards and pigsties, and generous quarters for the workmen.  Most of this was now falling into decay, year by year.  Only a few bedrooms were used—­the smallest and warmest—­and the great kitchen was the only living room.  It had been large enough for all the farm-servants to eat in and for the spinning and weaving of the women.  Now the family of three gathered lonesomely close to the hearth when a rare fire was indulged in on stormy winter nights.  The only source of income were the few sheep and goats and hens.  In the old days great flocks of sheep on the farm had sent fleeces to Milan.  Now there were only enough to furnish lambs on feast days and occasional fleeces to more prosperous neighbors.  The few goats provided the family with milk.  Far oftener than anyone knew, in the winters, they were in actual distress, lacking food and fuel.

But it was not her own hunger that burdened the nights of Marcus’s mother.  In letting her old father-in-law be hungry she felt that she was false to a trust.  And her boy must be saved to a happier life than his father’s had been.  He was eleven years old and must soon, if ever, turn to something better than tending sheep in a lonely pasture from sunrise till sunset.  She did not let him know it, thinking that he was too young to look beyond the passing days in which he seemed able to find happiness, but she had laid aside every year, heedless of the sacrifice, some little part of the scanty money that came from the eggs and chickens.  What she could do with it she did not know.  It grew so slowly.  But there was always the hope that some day Marcus would find it a full-grown treasure to face the world with.  When, seven years ago, the great Pliny had given to Como a fund to educate freeborn orphans, she had thought bitterly that her baby would be better off without her.  Sometimes, since then, she had been mad enough to think of trying to see Pliny when he came to the villa which was nearest to her farm.  He was there now.  Stories of his magnificent kindnesses were rife.  His tenants were the most