ssion of melancholy and apprehension.

Apprehension, or, certainly, uneasiness, pervaded the audience and, as it
were, seemed to diffuse itself from the Imperial Pavilion, crowded, not,
as usual, with jaunty figures in gaudy apparel, all crimson, blue, and
green, picked out and set off by edgings of silver and gold, but with a
solemn retinue, all hidden under dingy umbrella hats and swathed in rain-
cloaks. To see the throne occupied by a human shape so obscured by its
habiliments gave all beholders an uncanny feeling in which foreboding
deepened into alarm. The appearance of the whole audience, still more of
the Imperial retinue, was one to cause all beholders to interpret the garb
of the spectators as ill-omened, almost as inviting disaster.

In the center of the arena was built up the pyre which was to consume all
that was left of Murmex. It was constructed of thirty-foot logs, each tier
laid across the one below it, the lower tiers of linden, willow, elm and
other quick-burning woods, their interstices filled with fat pine-knots;
the upper tiers of oak and maple, at which last I heard not a few
whispered protests, for old-fashioned folk felt it almost a sacrilege that
holy wood should be used to burn a gladiator, a man of blood. The pyre was
thus a square structure thirty feet on a side and fully twenty feet high;
each side showing silvered log-butts or log-ends, with gilded pine-knots
all between; its top covered with laurel boughs, over which was laid a
crimson rug with golden fringe, setting off the corpse of Murmex, which
lay in the silver armor he had worn in his last fight, high on the mound
of laurel boughs.

At each focus of the arena was placed a round marble altar, one to Venus
Libitina, one to Pluto. By these the heralds took their stands and
proclaimed that no offerings would be made at the altars except one black
lamb at each, that every man slain in the day's fighting would be an
offering to the Manes of Murmex, since the day would be occupied solely
with the celebration of funeral games for the solace of his ghost.

The games began with a set-to of sixteen pairs of gladiators fighting
simultaneously. After this was over the sixteen victors drew off towards
one end of the arena and sixteen other pairs fought simultaneously. After
them the victors of the first set paired off as the _lanistae_ arranged
and the eight pairs fought. The eight victors again rested while the
survivors of the second set simu