hat, taken in connection with the events which
succeeded it, it bears an appalling significance: Mr. Papilius
Lena remarked to George W. Cassius (commonly known as the 'Nobby
Boy of the Third Ward'), a bruiser in the pay of the Opposition,
that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive; and when
Cassius asked, 'What enterprise?' he only closed his left eye
temporarily and said with simulated indifference, 'Fare you
well,' and sauntered towards Caesar. Marcus Brutus, who is
suspected of being the ringleader of the band that killed Caesar,
asked what it was that Lena had said. Cassius told him, and
added, in a low tone, '_I fear our purpose is discovered._'

"Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena,
and a moment after Cassius urged that lean and hungry vagrant,
Casca, whose reputation here is none of the best, to be sudden
for _he feared prevention_. He then turned to Brutus, apparently
much excited, and asked what should be done, and swore that
either he or Caesar _should never turn back_--he would kill
himself first. At this time Caesar was talking to some of the
back-country members about the approaching fall elections, and
paying little attention to what was going on around him. Billy
Trebonius got into conversation with the people's friend and
Caesar's--Mark Antony--and under some pretence or other got him
away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and
others of the gang of infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at
present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then Metellus Cimber
knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled from
banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and
refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request,
first Brutus and then Cassius begged for the return of the
banished Publius; but Caesar still refused. He said he could not
be moved; that he was as fixed as the North Star, and proceeded
to speak in the most complimentary terms of the firmness of that
star and its steady character. Then he said he was like it, and
he believed he was the only man in the country that was;
therefore, since he was 'constant' that Cimber should be
banished, he was also 'constant' that he should stay banished,
and he'd be hanged if he didn't keep him so!

"Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight,
Casca sprang at Caesar and struck him with a dirk. Caesa