The interior of the peasant hut was filled with people who had sought shelter there, and the stifling atmosphere which the artist felt at the door induced him to remain outside.

He had stood there dripping barely fifteen minutes when loud shouts and yells were heard on the road from Pelusium by which he had come, and upon the flooded dike appeared a body of men rushing forward with marvellous speed.

The nearer they came the fiercer and more bewildering sounded the loud, shrill medley of their frantic cries, mingled with hoarse laughter, and the spectacle presented to the eyes was no less rough and bold.

The majority seemed to be powerful men.  Their complexions were as light as the Macedonians; their fair, red, and brown locks were thick, unkempt, and bristling.  Most of the reckless, defiantly bold faces were smooth-shaven, with only a mustache on the upper lip, and sometimes a short imperial.  All carried weapons, and a fleece covered the shoulders of many, while chains, ornamented with the teeth of animals, hung on their white muscular chests.

“Galatians,” Hermon heard one man near him call to another.  “They came to the fortress as auxiliary troops.  Philippus forbade them to plunder on pain of death, and showed them—­the gods be thanked!—­that he was in earnest.  Otherwise it would soon look here as though the plagues of locusts, flood, and fire had visited us at once.  Red-haired men are not the only sons of Typhon!”

And Hermon thought that he had indeed never seen any human beings equally fierce, bold to the verge of reckless madness, as these Gallic warriors.  The tempest which swept them forward, and the water through which they waded, only seemed to increase their enjoyment, for sheer delight rang in their exulting shouts and yells.

Oh, yes!  To march amid this uproar of the elements was a pleasure to the healthy men.  It afforded them the rarest, most enlivening delight.  For a long time nothing had so strongly reminded them of the roaring of the wind and the rushing of the rain in their northern home.  It seemed a delicious relief, after the heat and dryness of the south, which they had endured with groans.

When they perceived the eyes fixed upon them they swung their weapons, arched their breasts with conscious vanity, distorted their faces into terrible threatening grimaces, or raised bugle horns to their lips, drew from them shrill, ear-piercing notes and gloated, with childish delight, in the terror of the gaping crowd, on whom the restraint of authority sternly forbade them to show their mettle.

Lust of rapine and greed for booty glittered in many a fiery, longing look, but their leaders kept them in check with the sword.  So they rushed on without stopping, like a thunderstorm pregnant with destruction which the wind drives over a terrified village.

Hermon also had to take the road they followed, and, after giving the Gauls a long start, he set out again.