ny hours of darkness, hearing the footsteps of
men who patrolled the streets, and listening with anxious ear for any
sound of warning.

He rose in the twilight, and again held conference with those of the
townsmen who were stoutest in the Gothic cause. To them he announced
that he should travel this day as far as Arpinum (whither he was
conducting a lady who desired to enter a convent hard by that city),
and thence should proceed in search of Totila, for whom, he assured his
hearers, he carried letters of summons from the leading churchmen at
Rome. This news greatly cheered the unhappy Aletrians, who had been
troubled by the thought that the Goths were heretics. If Roman
ecclesiastics closed their eyes to this obstacle, the inhabitants of a
little mountain town evidently need nurse no scruples in welcoming the
conqueror. With acclamations and good wishes, the crowd saw Marcian and
his train set forth along the road over the hills; before the sun had
shed its first beam into the westward valley, they had lost sight of
Aletrium.

Not a word of the perils escaped had been allowed to reach Veranilda's
ear; exhausted by her journeying and her emotions, she had slept
soundly through the whole night, and this morning, when Marcian told
her how near was their destination, she laughed light-heartedly as a
child. But not yet had he looked upon her countenance. At Aletrium he
might have done so had he willed, but he withheld himself as if from a
dread temptation.

Never had he known such tremours of cowardliness as on this ride over
the hills. He strained his eyes in every direction, and constantly
imagined an enemy where there was none. The brigands, as he found by
inquiry of labouring peasants, had not even passed this way. He would
not halt, though the heat of the sun grew terrible. At length, when
exhaustion threatened men and beasts, they surmounted a ridge, issued
from a forest of chestnut-trees, and all at once, but a little way
below them, saw the gleam of the river Liris.

CHAPTER XX

THE ISLAND IN THE LIRIS

Not yet the '_taciturnus amnis_,' which it becomes in the broad,
seaward valley far below, the Liris at this point parts into two
streams, enclosing a spacious island, and on either side of the island
leaps with sound and foam, a river kindred to the mountains which feed
its flood. Between the two cataracts, linked to the river banks with
great arched bridges, stood Marcian's villa. Never more than a