, slowly on; and heard many and
mighty sounds hissing and roaring through the gloom. But last night, as
I looked thereon, behold the stream was no longer dull, but intensely
and fiercely luminous; and while I gazed, the beast that liveth with me,
and was cowering by my side, uttered a shrill howl, and fell down and
died, and the slaver and froth were round his lips. I crept back to my
lair; but I distinctly heard, all the night, the rock shake and tremble;
and, though the air was heavy and still, there were the hissing of pent
winds, and the grinding as of wheels, beneath the ground. So, when I
rose this morning at the very birth of dawn, I looked again down the
abyss, and I saw vast fragments of stone borne black and floatingly over
the lurid stream; and the stream itself was broader, fiercer, redder
than the night before. Then I went forth, and ascended to the summit of
the rock: and in that summit there appeared a sudden and vast hollow,
which I had never perceived before, from which curled a dim, faint
smoke; and the vapor was deathly, and I gasped, and sickened, and nearly
died. I returned home. I took my gold and my drugs, and left the
habitation of many years; for I remembered the dark Etruscan prophecy
which saith, "When the mountain opens, the city shall fall--when the
smoke crowns the Hill of the Parched Fields, there shall be woe and
weeping in the hearths of the Children of the Sea." Dread master, ere I
leave these walls for some more distant dwelling, I come to thee. As
thou livest, know I in my heart that the earthquake that sixteen years
ago shook this city to its solid base, was but the forerunner of more
deadly doom. The walls of Pompeii are built above the fields of the
Dead, and the rivers of the sleepless Hell. Be warned and fly!'

'Witch, I thank thee for thy care of one not ungrateful. On yon table
stands a cup of gold; take it, it is thine. I dreamt not that there
lived one, out of the priesthood of Isis, who would have saved Arbaces
from destruction. The signs thou hast seen in the bed of the extinct
volcano,' continued the Egyptian, musingly, 'surely tell of some coming
danger to the city; perhaps another earthquake--fiercer than the last.
Be that as it may, there is a new reason for my hastening from these
walls. After this day I will prepare my departure. Daughter of
Etruria, whither wendest thou?'

'I shall cross over to Herculaneum this day, and, wandering thence along
the coa