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.
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