ord of military command rang out
stern and clear.

"Forward! Seize the caitiffs! Let not one escape! Slay if they resist!"
and a rush was made to the chamber where the notes of the Christian
psalm had but now died away.

"Out with your lights!" exclaimed, in a muffled tone, Hilarus, the
fossor. "Follow me as closely and as quietly as you can. Good Father
Primitius, your arm. By God's help we will disappoint those hunters of
men of their anticipated prey."

"Or join our brethren in martyrdom, as is His will," devoutly added
Primitius. "He doeth all things well."

But we must go back a little to learn the cause and means of this armed
invasion of the Catacombs.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[52] See Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, vii., 16 and 22. Eutychianus, a Roman
Christian, is recorded to have buried three hundred and forty-two
martyrs with his own hands.

[53] See Chapter VI.

[54] Through the long lapse of ages this memorial has been preserved,
and may still be read in Grater's great collection of ancient
inscriptions. It is also referred to in Gibbon. In the epitaph occur the
following fine lines:

INTEMERATA FIDE CONTEMPTO PRINCIPE MVNDI CONFESSVS XRM CAELESTIA REGNA
PETISTI.

"With unfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having
confessed Christ, thou dost seek the celestial realms."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE BETRAYAL--THE PURSUIT.

When the unhappy Isidorus discovered that through his cowardice and
tergiversation, and through the confessions extorted from his
distempered mind, a criminal charge had been trumped up against the fair
Callirho[e:], whose beauty and grace had touched his susceptible
imagination, he was almost beside himself with rage and remorse. He
protested to the Prefect Naso and his disreputable son, Calphurnius,
that she was as innocent as an unweaned babe of the monstrous crime
alleged against her--that of conspiracy to poison her beloved mistress.

"Accursed be the day," cried the wretched Isidorus, clenching his hands
till his nails pierced the flesh, "accursed be the day when I first came
to your horrid den to betray innocent blood. Would I had perished e'er
it dawned."

"Hark you, my friend," said Naso, "do you remember by what means you
promised to earn the good red gold with which I bought you?"

"Do not remind me of my shame in becoming a spy upon the Christians,"
cried the Greek with a look of self-loathing and abhorrence.

"Nay; 'by becoming one yourself,