hill mentioned by Johannes stood a great
many officers, who were eagerly looking through a small gap in the lava
into the portion of the Gothic encampment visible to them.

When Cethegus had looked for some time, he cried:

"There is no doubt about it! They are evacuating this easternmost part
of their position; they are pushing the wagons, which were drawn
together, apart, and dragging them farther to the right, to the west.
That must mean concentration; perhaps a sally."

"What do you think, Johannes?" quietly asked a young captain, who had
evidently only lately arrived from Byzantium, and who was a stranger to
Cethegus, "what do you think? Could not the new catapults reach the
barbarians from the point of that rock? I mean the last inventions of
Martinus--such as my brother took to Rome."

"_To Rome?_" repeated Cethegus, and cast a sharp look at the questioner
and at Johannes.

He felt himself suddenly turn hot and cold--a fright came over him,
more terrible still than he had experienced when he had heard of the
landing of Belisarius, of Totila's election, of Totila's march to Rome
at _Pons Padi_, of Totila's entrance into the Tiber; or of the arrival
of Narses in Italy. It seemed to him as if an iron hand were clutching
his heart and brain. He saw that Johannes imposed silence on the young
questioner with a furious frown.

"_To Rome?_" again repeated Cethegus in a low voice, and fixing his
eyes, now upon the stranger, now upon Johannes.

"Well, yes, of course, to Rome!" at last answered Johannes. "Zenon,
this man is Cethegus, the Prefect of Rome."

The young Byzantine bowed with the expression of one who sees for the
first time some far-famed monster.

"Cethegus, Zenon here, a captain who till now has been fighting on the
Euphrates, arrived only yesterday evening with some Persian bowmen from
Byzantium."

"And his brother," asked Cethegus, "has gone to _Rome_?"

"My brother Megas," quietly answered the Byzantine--who had now
collected himself--"had the order to offer to the Prefect of Rome"--and
here he again bowed--"the newly-invented double-catapults for the walls
of Rome. He embarked long before me; so I thought that he had already
arrived, and was gone to you in Rome. But his freight is very heavy. I
am rejoiced to become personally acquainted with the most powerful man
of the West, the glorious defender of the Tomb of Hadrian."

But Cethegus cast another sharp look at Johannes, and, abruptly bowi