Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/17

 of the features, the absolute mastery of the soul that stood out, and the visage upon which my eye rested, told me that there was a figure there. No ghost this. The face I could not describe since every feature seemed so complete that they blended into the one perfect character of a man. Forehead and eyes and mouth, I saw, and wavy hair flung back and beard enough, with heavy brows, but no feature stood out—all was subject unto the character, unto the face as a whole, unto the soul of the man who himself looked, subject unto nothing. My mind ran back through all the kingly souled men I have seen. Onones, the Parthian; Leontes, the Thracian, and that great German Chief, whom we saw fall in the little skirmish beyond the Danube. These three men walked through my imagination to-day with the stately majesty of gods. Not Zeus, himself, could be more kingly than they, yet there in the shadow, with only the flickering light from the torch upon his face, plus some strange luminous glow that seemed to be upon his hair and for which I could not account, was one who somehow flung these other men out of memory. There he stood in the shadow, and yet his face was light, lighter, I swear, than the combined rays of all the feeble flickering torches the cowardly priests held above him. "Whom do you seek? "he asked in that calm voice of his that seemed to me to have the strength of the Universe in its tone and timbre; and, so help me Jove! If the whole doddering bunch that were so keen to take him did not stand there with chattering teeth and husking, inarticulate words in their throats. I listened till I felt a chill go shivering through the group and then, from my place in the rear, in that disgust for the cowards which my heart felt, I an-