` The bricked-up arch with `` Finish ! '' on the plaster was what shook me , for I was not much more than a boy . ' ` What a shame ! ' said Una . ` But did you feel happy after you 'd had a good -- ' Dan stopped her with a nudge . ` Happy ? ' said Parnesius . ` When the men of the Cohort I was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight , their birds under their arms , and asked me who I was ? No , I was not happy ; but I made my new Cohort unhappy too ... I wrote my Mother I was happy , but , oh , my friends ' -- he stretched arms over bare knees -- ' I would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered through my first months on the Wall . Remember this : among the officers was scarcely one , except myself -LRB- and I thought I had lost the favour of Maximus , my General -RRB- , scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or folly . Either he had killed a man , or taken money , or insulted the magistrates , or blasphemed the Gods , and so had been sent to the Wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear . And the men were as the officers . Remember , also , that the Wall was manned by every breed and race in the Empire . No two towers spoke the same tongue , or worshipped the same Gods . In one thing only we were all equal . No matter what arms we had used before we came to the Wall , on the Wall we were all archers , like the Scythians . The Pict can not run away from the arrow , or crawl under it . He is a bowman himself . He knows ! ' ' I suppose you were fighting Picts all the time , ' said Dan .
` XXXXX seldom fight .
Cohort Dan General Maximus Mother Picts Scythians Una cock-fight hiding-place