They Went

t of their strength; old Lelian too ? young Lelian, as he then was ? had invented some wondrous new weapons for the occasion. So they left the town, and never did the sovereign's military talent shine forth with brighter effulgence. He led his troops first against the more immediate neighbours, capturing, from one, seven hundred men or thereabouts; from another, four hundred and thirty, together with over a thousand women and children who had imprudently been left exposed and were soon exchanged for two hundred lusty men; among the Brambigones, further afield, he succeeded in taking, besides a number of warriors, the king's own daughter, an elderly girl who was ransomed for half a thousand males; the Volusinians, yet more inland ? he was to see them again, the Volusini- ans, forty years later! ? they yielded, together with a host of ordinary captives, one single individual worth an army in himself, to wit, the Roman Ormidius Limpidus, an engineer of highest capacity who, after being detected in a disreputable intrigue with some high-born dame in the household of his own country's proconsul, (he never could leave ladies alone) had fled for protection to the ruler of these same Volusinians, and was employed by him at the time of his capture as court butler and, in spare moments, tutor to his twenty-three sons. In fact, the raid was pursued to the very boundaries of the distant and fierce Alloquisti. Here the king drew in his victorious followers. Those Alloquisti...