not my cause only, but the cause of all," said Virginius, in
moving accents, to the people. "If my daughter shall be robbed from me,
what father and mother among you all is safe?"

Icilius earnestly seconded this appeal, and the mothers who stood by
wept with pity, their tears moving the people even more than the words
of the father and lover.

But Appius was not to be moved by tears or appeals. Bent on gaining his
unholy ends, he did not even give Virginius time to address the
tribunal, but before Claudius had done speaking he hastened to give
sentence. The maiden, he said, should be considered a slave until proved
to be free-born. In the mean time she should remain in the custody of
her master Claudius.

This monstrous decision, a perversion of all law, natural and civil,
filled the people with astonishment. Could the maker of the laws of Rome
thus himself set them at defiance? They stood as if stunned, until
Claudius approached to lay hands on the maiden, when the women and her
friends gathered around her and kept him off, while Virginius broke out
in passionate threats that he would not tamely submit to so great a
wrong.

Appius had prepared for this. He had brought with him a body of armed
patricians, and, supported by them, he bade his lictors to drive back
the crowd. Before their threatening axes the unarmed people fell back,
and the weeping maiden was left standing alone. Virginius looked on in
despair. Was he to be robbed of his daughter in the face of Rome, and in
defiance of all justice and honor? There was one way still to save her,
and only one.

With an aspect of humility he asked Appius to let him speak one word to
the nurse in the maiden's hearing, that he might learn whether she were
really his child or not. "If I am not indeed her father, I shall bear
her loss the lighter," he said.

Appius, with a show of moderation, consented, and the distracted father
drew the nurse and his daughter aside to a spot where stood some
butchers' booths, for the Forum of Rome was then a place of trade as
well as of justice. Here he snatched a knife from a butcher, and,
holding the poor girl in his arm, he cried, "This is the only way, my
child, to keep thee free," and plunged the weapon to her heart.

Then, turning to Appius, he cried, in threatening accents, "On you and
on your head be the curse of this blood!"

"Seize the madman!" yelled Appius.

But, brandishing the bloody knife, Virginius broke through the