SLAYERS OF INNOCENT BABES
they set upon him and cut him down, and stamped upon the body and scattered the severed limbs and galloped away.
But again and again the wailing child came after them. And in the rage of murder that had no end and of wails and denunciations that never ceased the troop missed the way to the Camp and went round and round the wild district where the children had been slain by them. The grandeur of night spread over the valley and the stars glimmered, sinless, innocent, remote.
The soldiers followed on their own tracks, and the cries of the boy on the heath were heavy on their souls. Round and round they wandered and killed in fury and yet could not kill.
At last, just before sunrise, with madness at their heels the troop galloped on to the shore of the sea. And the waves boiled under the frenzied onrush of the horses.
So perished all the horsemen and with them the Centurion Marcellus.
And to the far silent spot where by the roadway lay the bodies of the boy Lin and the other children, blood-stained, unburied, wolves came creeping stealthily, fearfully, and they sated themselves with the innocent and sweet bodies of the children.
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