Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/51

 lying dead on the floor of the forum! They were faithful to the end.

Camillus stayed in the country some distance from Rome. He had felt bitter against the city which he had loved, and still loved in the bottom of his heart. One day he led some of the people out of a small town toward a camp where a party of Gauls were intrenched. At midnight the trumpets sounded. Camillus and his followers fell upon the camp and gained a victory. When this news came to the ears of the Romans who had fled from Rome, many of them held a meeting and sent a messenger to beg him to take the lead once more.

“I will come,” said he, “if I am invited by the people in the Capitol.”

Ah, the Capitol was a hill inside the walls of Rome, and on it stood a fortress, and in this fortress was a body of citizens who would not yield to Brennus and his Gauls. But how was word to be carried to the Capitol? Who would go?

A young man dressed himself in rough clothes, so as to appear like a common peasant, and he hid large pieces of cork under his clothes. Having travelled to the river Tiber, which runs by Rome, he made his garments into a bundle and placed the bundle on his head and fastened the corks together for a float, and as he held the float he