Rome from this point before."

"It ought to afford a good prospect," said the sculptor; "for it
was from this point--at least we are at liberty to think so, if we
choose--that many a famous Roman caught his last glimpse of his native
city, and of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides of the
Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and see what a sheer tumble there
might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that
have accumulated at the foot of the precipice."

They all bent over, and saw that the cliff fell perpendicularly downward
to about the depth, or rather more, at which the tall palace rose in
height above their heads. Not that it was still the natural, shaggy
front of the original precipice; for it appeared to be cased in ancient
stonework, through which the primeval rock showed its face here and
there grimly and doubtfully. Mosses grew on the slight projections, and
little shrubs sprouted out of the crevices, but could not much soften
the stern aspect of the cliff. Brightly as the Italian moonlight fell
adown the height, it scarcely showed what portion of it was man's work
and what was nature's, but left it all in very much the same kind of
ambiguity and half-knowledge in which antiquarians generally leave the
identity of Roman remains.

The roofs of some poor-looking houses, which had been built against the
base and sides of the cliff, rose nearly midway to the top; but from an
angle of the parapet there was a precipitous plunge straight downward
into a stonepaved court.

"I prefer this to any other site as having been veritably the Traitor's
Leap," said Kenyon, "because it was so convenient to the Capitol. It was
an admirable idea of those stern old fellows to fling their political
criminals down from the very summit on which stood the Senate House and
Jove's Temple, emblems of the institutions which they sought to violate.
It symbolizes how sudden was the fall in those days from the utmost
height of ambition to its profoundest ruin."

"Come, come; it is midnight," cried another artist, "too late to be
moralizing here. We are literally dreaming on the edge of a precipice.
Let us go home."

"It is time, indeed," said Hilda.

The sculptor was not without hopes that he might be favored with the
sweet charge of escorting Hilda to the foot of her tower. Accordingly,
when the party prepared to turn back, he offered her his arm. Hilda at
first accepted it; but when they had par