“’Then himself advised them
       Upon the rear to fall;
     But Dumnorix surprised them,
       And sounded a recall. 
     Quoth he, “The gods sustain us! 
       These ills we’ll still surmount!”
     And Titus Labienus
       Was stationed on a mount.”

    “Thus comes the cry to hand here
       Across the western sea,
     From Yankeedoodledandia,
       The land that is to be. 
     My heart is wrung with sorrow;
       Hot springs the pitying tear. 
     Pray, Julius C., to-morrow
       Let me get down from here I

    “Oh, send me to the valley! 
       Oh, send me to the town! 
     Bid me rebuff the sally,
       Or cut the stragglers down;
     Send me once more to battle
       With Vercingetorix;
     I’ll drive his Gallic cattle,
       And stop his Gallic tricks.

    “Oh! sooner shall my legion
       Around my standard fall;
     In grim Helvetic region,
       Or in galumphing Gaul;
     Sooner the foe enchain us,
       Sooner our life-blood spill,
     Than Titus Labienus
       Stand longer on the hill!”

CHAPTER X.

A new life.

“Bell,” said Hildegarde, “I really think I must be a cat in disguise.”

“What do you mean, dear?” inquired Bell, looking up from her dishpan.

“Why, I have had so many lives.  This is the fifth, at the least computation.  It is very extraordinary.”

Quiet Bell waited, seeing that more was coming.  The two girls were sitting on the end of a wharf, in the sparkling clearness of a September morning.  Before them stretched a great lake, a sheet of silver, dotted as far as the eye could see with green islands.  Behind lay a pebbly beach, and farther up, nestled among a fringe of forest trees, stood a bark hut, with broad verandahs and overhanging eaves.  Hildegarde looked up and around, her face shining with pleasure.

“They have all been so happy—­the lives,” she said.  “But this surely is the most beautiful to look at.  You see,” here she turned again to her companion, “first I was a little girl, and then a big one, at home in New York; and a very singularly odious specimen of both I was.”

“Am I expected to believe this?” asked Bell, quietly.

“Oh yes! because I know, you see, and I remember just how detestable I was.  Children are so sometimes, you know, even with the very best parents, and I certainly had those.  Well, at last I grew so unbearable that I had to be sent away.  Oh, you need not raise your eyebrows, my dear!  It’s very nice of you, but you never saw me then.  I don’t mean that I was sent to the Reform School; but my father and mother had to go to California, and I was not strong, so the journey was not thought best for me; and besides, dear mamma saw that if I was ever going to amount to anything I must be taken away from