augur bent his ear. Sounds
shaped themselves into something like articulation, and the following
couplet was distinctly heard:--

"While the eagle is in his nest, the eaglet shall not prevail;
Nor shall the eagle be smitten in his eyrie."

"Azor," said the warrior, clenching his sword, "these three times hast
thou mocked me, and by the immortal gods thou diest!"

"Impious one! I could strike thee powerless as the dust thou treadest
on. Give me the bauble," said he, addressing the raven. The bird
immediately gave the clasp he had purloined into his master's hand.

"This shall witness between us," continued he. "Dare to lift thy hand,
the very palace shall bear testimony to thy treason--that thou hast
sought me for purposes too horrible even for thy tongue to utter.
Hence! When least expected I may meet thee. If it had not been for thy
mother's sake, and for my vow, the emperor ere this had been privy to
it."

Stung with rage and disappointment, he put back his weapon, and with
threats and imprecations departed.

On a couch inlaid with ivory and pearl, within a vaulted chamber in
the Praetorian Palace of the royal city, lay the emperor, in a coverlid
of rich stuff. Disease had crushed his body, but the indomitable
spirit was unquenched. Tossing and disturbed, at length he started
from his bed. Calling to his chamberlain, he demanded if there had not
been footsteps in the apartment. The ruler of the world, whose nod
could shake the nations, and whose word was the arbiter of life or
death to millions of his fellow-men, lay here--startled at the passing
of a sound, the falling of a shadow! His face, whose chief
characteristic was power--that strength and determination of spirit
which all acknowledge, and but few comprehend--was furrowed with
deeper marks than care had wrought. Sixty years had moulded the steady
and inflexible purpose of his soul in lines too palpable to be
misunderstood. His beard was short and grizzled; and a swarthy hue,
betraying his African birth, was now become sallow, and even sickly in
the extreme; but an eagle eye still beamed in all its fierceness and
rapacity from under his scanty brows. His nose was not of the Roman
sort, like the beak of that royal bird, but thick and even clumsy,
lacking that sharp and predacious intellect generally associated with
forms of this description.

Such was Septimus Severus, then styled on a coin just struck
"BRITANNICVS MAXIMVS," in commemoration