Essex and of Suffolk, about the river Colne.

Not a very large kingdom this, but even as small as it was, King
Coel did not hold it in undisputed sway. For he was one of the
tributary princes of Britain, in the days when Roman arms, and
Roman law, and Roman dress, and Roman manners, had place and
power throughout England, from the Isle of Wight, to the Northern
highlands, behind whose forest-crowned hills those savage natives
known as the Picts--"the tattooed folk"--held possession of
ancient Scotland, and defied the eagles of Rome.

The monotonous song of the rowers, keeping time with each dip of
the broad-bladed oars, rose and fell in answer to the beats of
the master's silver baton, and Helena too followed the measure
with the tap, tap, of her sandaled foot.

Suddenly there shot out around one of the frequent turns in the
river, the gleam of other oars, the high prow of a larger galley,
and across the water came the oar-song of a larger company of
rowers. Helena started to her feet.

"Look, Cleon," she cried, pointing, eagerly towards the
approaching boat, " 't is my father's own trireme. Why this haste
to return, think'st thou?"

"I cannot tell, little mistress," replied the freedman Cleon, her
galley-master; "the king thy father must have urgent tidings, to
make him return thus quickly to Camalodunum."

Both the girl and the galley-master spoke in Latin, for the