narrow streets leading to the banks of the river, and finally
gained the margin of the Tiber--hard by the little island that still
rises in the midst of its waters. Here, for the first time, the Pagan
paused mechanically in his course, and vacantly directed his dull,
dreamy eyes on the prospect before him, where the walls, stretching
abruptly outward from their ordinary direction, enclosed the Janiculum
Hill, as it rose with its irregular mass of buildings on the opposite
bank of the river.

At this sudden change from action to repose, the overtasked energies
which had hitherto gifted the limbs of Antonina with an unnatural power
of endurance, abruptly relaxed. She sank down helpless and silent; her
head drooped towards the hard ground, as towards a welcome pillow, but
found no support, for the Pagan's iron grasp of her hand remained
unyielding as ever. Infirm though he was, he appeared at this moment
to be unconscious that his prisoner was now hanging at his side. Every
association connected with her, every recollection of his position with
her in her father's house, had vanished from his memory. A darker
blindness seemed to have sunk over his bodily perceptions; his eyes
rolled slowly to and fro over the prospect before him, but regarded
nothing; his panting breaths came thick and fast; his shrunk chest
heaved as if some deep, dread agony were pent within it--it was evident
that a new crisis in his insanity was at hand.

At this moment one of the bands of marauders--the desperate criminals
of famine and plague--who still prowled through the city, appeared in
the street. Their trembling hands sought their weapons, and their
haggard faces brightened, when they first discerned the Pagan and the
girl; but as they approached nearer they saw enough in the figures of
the two, at a glance, to destroy their hopes of seizing on them either
plunder or food. For an instant they stood by their intended victims,
as if debating whether to murder them only for murder's sake, when the
appearance of two women, stealthily quitting a house farther on in the
street, carrying a basket covered by some tattered garments, attracted
their attention. They turned instantly to follow the bearers of the
basket, and again Ulpius and Antonina were left alone on the river's
bank.

The appearance of the assassins had been powerless, as every other
sight or event in the city, in arousing the faculties of Ulpius. He
had neither looked on the