laimed
the Pagan, raising his withered hands, and addressing in a savage
ecstacy his imagined deities. 'Your servant Ulpius stops not on the
journey that leads him to your repeopled shrines! Blood, crime,
danger, pain--pride and honour, joy and rest, have I strewn like
sacrifices at your altars' feet! Time has whirled past me; youth and
manhood have lain long since buried in the hidden Lethe which is the
portion of life; age has wreathed his coils over my body's strength,
but still I watch by your temples and serve your mighty cause! Your
vengeance is near! Monarchs of the world, your triumph is at hand!'

He remained for some time in the same position, looking fixedly up into
the trackless darkness above him, drinking in the sounds
which--alternately rising and sinking--still floated round him. The
trembling gleam of his lantern fell red and wild upon his livid
countenance. His shaggy hair floated in the cold breezes that blew by
him. At this moment he would have appeared from a distance, like a
phantom of fire perishing in a mist of darkness; like a Gnome in
adoration in the bowels of the earth; like a forsaken spirit in a
solitary purgatory, watching for the advent of a glimpse of beauty, or
a breath of air.

At length he aroused himself from his trance, trimmed with careful hand
his guiding lantern, and set forward to penetrate the breadth of the
great rift he had just entered.

He moved on in an oblique direction several feet, now creeping over the
tops of the foundation arches, now skirting the extremities of
protrusions in the ruined brick-work, now descending into dark slimy
rubbish-choked chasms, until the rift suddenly diminished in all
directions.

The atmosphere was warmer in the place he now occupied; he could
faintly distinguish patches of dark moss, dotted here and there over
the uneven surface of the wall; and once or twice, some blades of long
flat grass, that grew from a prominence immediately above his head,
were waved in his face by the wind, which he could now feel blowing
through the narrow fissure that he was preparing to enlarge. It was
evident that he had by this time advanced to within a few feet of the
outer extremity of the wall.

'Numerian wanders after his child through the streets,' muttered the
Pagan, as he deposited his lantern by his side, bared his trembling
arms, and raised his iron bar, 'the slaves of his neighbour the senator
are forth to pursue me. On all sides my en