mighty and must be obeyed!'

He walked to the entrance leading into the first apartment of the
temple, and then waited to be followed by Numerian, who, now for the
first time separated from Ulpius, remained stationary in the position
he had last occupied, and looked eagerly around him. No chance of
escape presented itself; the mouth of the vault on one side, and the
passage through the partition on the other, were the only outlets to
the place. There was no hope but to follow the Pagan into the great
hall of the temple, to keep carefully at a distance from him, and to
watch the opportunity of flight through the doorway. The street, so
desolate when last beheld, might now afford more evidence that it was
inhabited. Citizens, guards might be passing by, and might be summoned
into the temple--help might be at hand.

As he moved forward with Antonina, such thoughts passed rapidly through
the father's mind, unaccompanied at the moment by the recollection of
the stranger who had followed them from the Pincian Gate, or of the
apathy of the famished populace in aiding each other in any emergency.
Seeing that he was followed as he had commanded, Ulpius passed on
before them to the pile of idols; but a strange and sudden alteration
appeared in his gait. He had hitherto walked with the step of a
man--young, strong, and resolute of purpose; now he dragged one limb
after the other as slowly and painfully as if he had received a mortal
hurt. He tottered with more than the infirmity of his age, his head
dropped upon his breast, and he moaned and murmured inarticulately in
low, long-drawn cries.

He had advanced to the side of the pile, half-way towards the doorway
of the temple, when Numerian, who had watched with searching eyes the
abrupt change in his demeanour, forgetting the dissimulation which
might still be all-important, abandoned himself to his first impulse,
and hurriedly pressing forward with Antonina, attempted to pass the
Pagan and escape. But at the moment Ulpius stopped in his slow
progress, reeled, threw out his hands convulsively, and seizing
Numerian by the arm, staggered back with him against the side-wall of
the temple. The fingers of the tortured wretch closed as if they were
never to be unlocked again--closed as if with the clutch of death, with
the last frantic grasp of a drowning man.

For days and nights past he had toiled incessantly under the relentless
tyranny of his frenzy, building up higher an