ed its every way.

But Taurus Antinor paid no heed to the roughness and inaccessibility of
the road. Unlike the rich patricians of the time he hated the drowsy
indolence of progress in a litter, and after the fatigues of a
nerve-racking day, the difficulties of ill-paved roads were in harmony
with his present mood.

Assuring himself that old Folces and the girl Nola were close at his
heels, he stepped briskly along the now precipitous incline of the hill.
The rapid movement did him good. The air came to him from across the
gardens of the palaces, sweetly scented by late lilies and clumps of
dying roses.

Soon he had left the great circus behind him too, and now he started
climbing again, for his way led him upwards on the slope of the Aventine
Hill. The silence here seemed more absolute than among the dwellings of
the rich, for there, at times, a night watchman would emerge from a
cross-road and give challenge to the belated passer-by, whilst a certain
bustle of suspended animation always reigned around the palace of the
Emperor even during the hours of sleep; some of his slaves and guard
were always kept awake, ready to minister to any fancy or caprice that
might seize the mad Caesar in the middle of the night.

But here where there were no palaces to guard, no insane ruler to
protect, no one came to question the purpose of the benighted wanderers,
nor did sudden outbursts of laughter or good cheer pierce the mud walls
of the humble abodes that lay scattered on the slope of the hill.

The waning moon had hidden her light behind a heavy bank of clouds, a
dull greyness pervaded the whole landscape, causing it to look weird and
forlorn in the gloom. The few trees dotted about here and there looked
starved and gaunt on the barren hill-side, with great skeleton-like arms
that waved mournfully in the breeze; the ground uneven and
parched--after the summer's drought--rose and sank in fantastic mounds
and shapes like tiny fortresses of ghosts or ghouls; the street itself
soon became merged in the general surroundings, only a tiny footway,
scarcely discernible in the gathering darkness, wound upwards to the
summit of the hill.

From time to time a solid block of what appeared only as impenetrable
blackness loomed up from out the shadows, with all the grandeur of
exaggerated size which the darkness of the night so generously lends.
Soon it would reveal itself as a small mud-covered box, with four bare
walls and a narrow d