oorway facing toward the south. Herein lived and
suffered a family of human beings--freedmen and women without the stigma
of slavery, but with all the misery of destitution and often of complete
starvation.

Here and there the little house would be surrounded by a vestibule--a
mere projection from the roof supported on a few rough beams--but never
a garden, scarcely a tree to cast a cooling shade on hot summer
afternoons, or clump of lilies or mimosa to sweeten the air that came
dank and fetid from over the marshes beyond the hill.

Not a sound now disturbed the stillness of the night save when a bat
fluttered overhead, or when furtive footsteps--on unavowable errand
bent--glided softly off the beaten track and quickly died away among the
shadows.

The praefect walked on, heedless of his surroundings. The mood that had
been on him ever since he left Caius Nepos' house still caused his mind
to wander restlessly in the illimitable regions of perplexity and doubt.
He scarcely looked where he was going, for he kept his eyes fixed upon
the starlit canopy above him and upon the crest of the hill which lost
itself in the darkness overhead.

Suddenly, out of the gloom, two pairs of hands emerged, and without
warning fastened themselves on the praefect's throat: thin, claw-like
hands they were, and above them gaunt arms, mere bones covered with
wrinkled flesh that proclaimed starvation and misery.

The old slave from the rear uttered a cry of terror; Nola clung to him
paralysed with fear. The slopes of the Aventine were noted for the gangs
of malefactors that infested them, and defying the power of the
aediles, rendered them unsafe for wayfarers even in the light of day.

Taurus Antinor, instantly brought back from the land of dreams, had no
great difficulty in freeing himself from the claw-like grasp. With a
quick gesture of his own powerful hands, he had in a moment succeeded in
dragging the gaunt fingers from off his throat, and, holding the thin
wrists with a firm grip, he gave them a sudden sharp twist, which
elicited two cries of pain and brought two pairs of knees in hard
contact with the ground.

It had all occurred in the space of a few seconds, and now a bundle of
soiled rags seemed to be lying huddled up under the praefect's foot, and
he looked like some powerful desert beast that has placed a massive paw
on a pair of puny rats.

The thin arms wriggled like worms in his mighty grasp.

"Pity, my lord! Pity!"