Before she had time to reply to his cruel sarcasm, a fresh swell of the besiegers' trumpets, and a loud burst of shouts and warcries from the battlement announced a fresh attack. The smith rushed from the room instantly with Rufus at his heels, and Julia had already made one step toward the window, intending to attempt the perilous descent, alone and unaided, when Crispus turned back suddenly, crying,

"The Rope! the Rope! By the Gods! do not leave the rope! She hath enough of the Amazon's blood in her to attempt it—"

"Of the Roman's blood, say rather!" she exclaimed, springing toward the casement, half maddened in perceiving her last hope frustrated.

Had she reached it, she surely would have perished; for no female head and hands, how strong and resolute so ever, could have descended that frail rope, and even if they could, the ruffian, rather than see her so escape, would have cut it asunder, and so precipitated her to the bottom of the rocky chasm.

But she did not attain her object; for Caius Crispus caught her with both arms around the waist and threw her so violently to the after end of the room, that, her head striking the angle of the wall, she was stunned for the moment, and lay almost senseless on the floor, while the savage, with a rude brutal laugh at her disappointment, rushed out of the room, bearing the rope along with him.

Scarce had he gone, however, when, audible distinctly amid the dissonant danger of the fray, the same feminine voice, which she had heard on the previous night, again aroused her, crying "Hist! hist! hist! Julia."

She sprang to her feet, and gained the window in a moment, and there, on the other verge of the chasm, near twenty feet distant from the window at which she stood, she discovered the figure of a slender dark-eyed and dark-complexioned boy, clad in a hunter's tunic, and bearing a bow in his hand, and a quiver full of arrows on his shoulder.

She had never seen that boy before; yet was there something in his features and expression that seemed familiar to her; that sort of vague resemblance to something well known and accustomed, which leads men to suppose that they must have dreamed of things which mysteriously enough they seem to remember on their first occurrence.

The boy raised his hand joyously, and cried aloud, without any fear of being heard, well knowing that all eyes and ears of the defenders of the place were turned to the side when the fight was raging, "Be of good cheer; you are saved, Julia. Paullus is nigh at hand, but ere he come, I will save you! Be of good courage, watch well these windows, but seem to be observing nothing."

And with the words, he turned away, and was lost to her sight in an instant, among the thickly-set underwood. Ere long, however, she caught a glimpse of him again, mounted upon a beautiful white horse, and gallopping like the wind down the sandy road, which wound through the wooded knolls toward the bridge below.

Again she lost him; and again he glanced upon her sight, for a single second, as he spurred his fleet horse across the single arch of brick, and dashed into the woods on the hither side of the torrent.

Two weary hours passed; and the sun was nigh to his setting, and she had seen, heard nothing more. Her heart, sickening with hope deferred, and all her frame trembling with terrible excitement, she had almost begun to doubt, whether the whole appearance of the boy might not have been a mere illusion of her feverish senses, a vain creation of her distempered fancy.

Still, fiercer than before, the battle raged without, and now there was no intermission of the uproar; to which was added the crashing of the roofs beneath heavy stones, betokening that engines of some kind had been brought up from the host, or constructed on the spot.

At length, however, her close watch was rewarded. A slight stir among the evergreen bushes on the brink of the opposite cliff caught her quick eye, and in another moment the head of a man, not of the boy whom she had seen before, nor yet, as her hope suggested, of her own Paullus, but of an aquiline-nosed clean-shorn Roman soldier, with an intelligent expression and quick eye, was thrust forward.

Perceiving Julia at the window, he drew back for a second; and the boy appeared in his place, and then both showed themselves together, the soldier holding in his hand the bow and arrows of the hunter youth.

"He is a friend," said the boy, "do all that he commands you."

But so fiercely was the battle raging now, that it was his signs, rather than his words, which she comprehended.

The next moment, a gesture of his hand warned her to withdraw from the embrasure; and scarcely had she done so before an arrow whistled from the bow and dropped into the room, having a piece of very slender twine attached to the end of it.

Perceiving the intention at a glance, the quick witted girl detached the string from the shaft without delay, and, throwing the latter out of the window lest it should betray the plan, drew in the twine, until she had some forty yards within the room, when it was checked from the other side, neither the soldier nor the youth showing themselves at all during the operation.

This done, however, the boy again stood forth, and pitched a leaden bullet, such as was used by the slingers of the day, into the window.

Perceiving that the ball was perforated, she secured it in an instant to the end of the clue, which she held in her hand, and, judging that the object of her friends was to establish a communication from their side, cast it back to them with a great effort, having first passed the twine around the mullion, by aid of which Crispus had lowered down his messenger.

The soldier caught the bullet, and nodded his approbation with a smile, but again receded into the bushes, suffering the slack of the twine to fall down in an easy curve into the ravine: so that the double communication would scarce have been perceived, even by one looking for it, in the gathering twilight.

The boy's voice once more reached her ears, though his form was concealed among the shrubbery. "Fear nothing, you are safe," he said, "But we can do no more until after midnight, when the moon shall give us light to rescue you. Be tranquil, and farewell."—

Be tranquil!—tranquil, when life or death—honor or infamy—bliss or despair, hung on that feeble twine, scarce thicker than the spider's web! hung on the chance of every flying second, each one of which was bringing nigher and more nigh, the hoofs of Catiline's atrocious band.

When voice of man can bid the waves be tranquil, while the north-wester is tossing their ruffian tops, and when the billows slumber at his bidding, then may the comforter assay, with some chance of success, to still the throbbings of the human heart, convulsed by such hopes, such terrors, as then were all but maddening the innocent and tranquil heart of Julia.

Tranquil she could not be; but she was calm and self-possessed, and patient.

Hour after hour lagged away; and the night fell black as the pit of Acheron, and still by the glare of pale fires and torches, the lurid light of which she could perceive from her windows, reflected on the heavens, the savage combatants fought on, unwearied, and unsparing.

Once only she went again to that window, wherefrom hung all her hopes; so fearful was she, that Crispus might find her there, and suspect what was in process.

With trembling fingers she felt for the twine, fatal as the thread of destiny should any fell chance sever it; and in its place she found a stout cord, which had been quietly drawn around the mullion, still hanging in a deep double bight, invisible amid the gloom, from side to side of the chasm.

And now, for the first time, she comprehended clearly the means by which her unknown friends proposed to reach her. By hauling on one end of the rope, any light plank or ladder might be drawn over to the hither from the farther bank, and the gorge might so be securely bridged, and safely traversed.

Perceiving this, and fancying that she could distinguish the faint clink of a hammer among the trees beyond the forest knoll, she did indeed become almost tranquil.

She even lay down on her couch, and closed her eyes, and exerted all the power of her mind to be composed and self-possessed, when the moment of her destiny should arrive.

But oh! how day-long did the minutes seem; how more than year-long the hours.

She opened her curtained lids, and lo! what was that faint pale lustre, glimmering through the tree-tops on the far mountain's brow?—all glory to Diana, chaste guardian of the chaste and pure! it was the signal of her safety! it was! it was the ever-blessed moon!—

Breathless with joy, she darted to the opening, and slowly, warily creeping athwart the gloomy void, she saw the cords drawn taught, and running stiffly, it is true, and reluctantly, but surely, around the mouldering stone mullion; while from the other side, ghost-like and pale, the skeleton of a light ladder, was advancing to meet her hand as if by magic.

Ten minutes more and she would be free! oh! the strange bliss, the inconceivable rapture of that thought! free from pollution, infamy! free to live happy and unblemished! free to be the beloved, the honored bride of her own Arvina.

Why did she shudder suddenly? why grew she rigid with dilated eyes, and lips apart, like a carved effigy of agonized surprise?—

Hark to that rising sound, more rapid than the rush of the stream, and louder than the wailing of the wind! thick pattering down the rocky gorge! nearer and nearer, 'till it thunders high above all the tumult of the battle! the furious gallop of approaching horse, the sharp and angry clang of harness!—

Lo! the hot glare, outfacing the pale moonbeam, the fierce crimson blaze of torches gleaming far down the mountain side, a torrent of rushing fire!

Hark! the wild cheer, "Catiline! Catiline!" to the skies! mixed with the wailing blast of the Roman trumpets, unwillingly retreating from the half-won watchtower!—

"Pull for your lives!" she cried, in accents full of horror and appalling anguish—"Pull! pull! if ye would not see me perish!"—

But it was all too late. Amid a storm of tumultuous acclamation, Catiline drew his panting charger up before the barricaded gateway, which had so long resisted the dread onset of the legionaries, and which now instantly flew open to admit him. Waving his hand to his men to pursue the retreating infantry, he sprang down from his horse, uttering but one word in the deep voice of smothered passion—"Julia!"—

His armed foot clanged on the pavement, ere the bridge was entirely withdrawn; for they, who manned the ropes, now dragged it back, as vehemently as they had urged forward a moment since.

"Back from the window, Julia!"—cried the voice—"If he perceive the ropes, all is lost! Trust me, we never will forsake you! Meet him! be bold! be daring! but defy him not!"—

Scarce had she time to catch the friendly admonition and act on it, as she did instantly, before the door of the outer room was thrown violently open; and, with his sallow face inflamed and fiery, and his black eye blazing with hellish light, Catiline exclaimed, as he strode in hot haste across the threshold,

"At last! at last, I have thee, Julia!"



CHAPTER XVII.

TIDINGS FROM ROME.

Time and the tide wear through the longest day. SHAKSPEARE.

"At last, I have thee, Julia!"

Mighty indeed was the effort of the mind, which enabled that fair slight girl to bear up with an undaunted lip and serene eye against the presence of that atrocious villain; and hope, never-dying hope, was the spirit which nerved her to that effort.

It was strange, knowing as she did the character of that atrocious and bloodthirsty tyrant, that she should not have given way entirely to feminine despair and terror, or sought by tears and prayers to disarm his purpose.

But her high blood cried out from every vein and artery of her body; and she stood calm and sustained by conscious virtue, even in that extremity of peril; neither tempting assault by any display of coward weakness, nor provoking it by any show of defiance.

There is nothing, perhaps, so difficult to any one who is not a butcher or an executioner by trade, with sensibilities blunted by the force of habit, as to attack or injure any thing, which neither flies, nor resists, neither braves, nor trembles.

And Catiline himself, savage and brutal as he was, full of ungoverned impulse and unbridled passion, felt, though he knew not wherefore, this difficulty at this moment.

Had she fallen at his feet, trembling, and tearful, and implored his mercy, he would have gloated on her terrors, laughed tears and prayers to scorn, yea! torn her from an altar's foot, to pour out upon her the vials of agony and foul pollution.

Had she defied, or braved his violence, his fury would have trampled her to the earth in an instant, and murder would have followed in the footsteps of worse violence.

But as she stood there, firm, cold, erect, and motionless as a statue of rare marble, with scarcely a pulse throbbing in her veins, and her clear azure eyes fixed on him with a cold and steady gaze, as if she would have fascinated him by their serene chaste influence, he likewise stood and gazed upon her with a strange mixture of impressions, wherein something akin to love and admiration were blent with what, in minds of better mould, should have been reverence and awe.

He felt, in short, that he lacked 'a spur to prick the sides of his intent,' a provocation to insult and aggression yet stronger than the passion and hot thirst of vengeance, which had been well nigh chilled by her severe and icy fortitude.

'Tis said that a lion will turn and flee, From a maid in the pride of her purity;

and here a fiercer and more dangerous savage stood powerless and daunted for the moment, by the same holy influence of virtue, which, it is said, has potency to tame the pinched king of the desert.

It was not, however, in the nature of that man to yield himself up long to any influence, save that of his own passions, and after standing mute for perhaps a minute, during which the flush on his sallow cheek, and the glare of his fiery eye, were blanched and dimmed somewhat, he advanced a step or two toward her, repeating the words,

"I have thee; thou art mine, Julia."

"Thy prisoner, Catiline," she replied quietly—"if you make women prisoners."

"My slave, minion."

"I am free-born, and noble. A patrician of a house as ancient as thine own. My ancestors, I have heard say, fought side by side with Sergius Silo."

"The more cause, that their daughter should sleep side by side with Sergius Catiline!" he replied with bitter irony; but there was less of actual passion in his tones, than of a desire to lash himself into fury.

"The less cause that a free-born lady should be disgraced by the grandson of his comrade in arms, who gave her father being."

Thus far her replies had been conducted in the spirit most likely to control, if any thing could control, the demon that possessed him; but seeing that her words had produced more effect on him than she had deemed possible, she made an effort to improve her advantage, and added, looking him firmly in the eye,

"I have heard tell that thou art proud, Catiline, as thou art nobly born. Let, then, thine own pride"——

"Proud! Proud! Ha! minion! What have your nobles left me that I should glory in—what of which I may still be proud? A name of the grandest, blasted by their base lies, and infamous! Service converted into shame! valor warped into crime! At home poverty, degradation, ruin! Abroad, debt, mockery, disgrace! Proud! proud! By Nemesis! fond girl. I am proud—to be the thing that they have made me, a terror, and a curse to all who call themselves patrician. For daring, remorseless! for brave, cruel! for voluptuous, sensual! for fearless, ruthless! for enterprising, reckless! for ambitious, desperate! for a man, a monster! for a philosopher, an atheist! Ha! ha! ha! ha! I am proud, minion, proud to be that I am—that which thou, Julia, shalt soon find me!"

She perceived, when it was too late, the error which she had made, and fearful of incensing him farther, answered nothing. But he was not so to be set at naught, for he had succeeded now in lashing himself into a fit of fury, and advancing upon her, with a face full of all hideous passions, a face that denoted his fell purpose, as plainly as any words could declare them.

"Dost hear me, girl, I say? Thou art mine, Julia."

"Thy prisoner, Catiline," she again repeated in the same steady tone as at first; but the charm had now failed of its effect, and it was fortunate for the sweet girl, that the fell wretch before whom she stood defenceless, had so much of the cat-like, tiger-like spirit in his nature, so much that prompted him to tantalize and torment before striking, to teaze and harass and break down the mind, before doing violence to the body of his subject enemies, or of those whom he chose to deem such.

Had he suspected at this moment that any chance of succor was at hand, however remote, he lacked neither the will nor the occasion to destroy her. He fancied that she was completely at his mercy; and perceiving that, in despite of her assumed coolness, she writhed beneath the terrors of his tongue, he revelled in the fiendish pleasure of triumphing in words over her spirit, before wreaking his vengeance on her person.

"My slave! Julia. My slave, soul and body! my slave, here and for ever! Slave to my passions, and my pleasures! Wilt yield, or resist, fair girl? Resist, I do beseech thee! Let some fire animate those lovely eyes, even if it be the fire of fury—some light kindle those pallid cheeks, even if it be the light of hatred! I am aweary of tame conquests."

"Then wherefore conquer; or conquering, wherefore not spare?"—she answered.

"I conquer, to slake my thirst of vengeance. I spare not, for the wise man's word to the fallen, is still, V VICTIS. Wilt yield, or resist, Julia? wilt be the sharer, or the victim of my pleasures? speak, I say, speak!" he shouted savagely, perceiving that she sought to evade a direct answer. "Speak and reply, directly, or I will do to thee forthwith what most thou dreadest! and then wipe out thy shame by agonies of death, to which the tortures of old Regulus were luxury."

"If I must choose, the victim!" she replied steadily. "But I believe you will not so disgrace your manhood."

"Ha! you believe so, you shall feel soon and know. One question more, wilt thou yield or resist?"—

"Resist," she answered, "to the last, and when dishonored, die, and by death, like Lucretia, win back greater honor! Lucretia's death had witnesses, and her tale found men's ears."

"Thy death shall be silent, thy shame loud. I will proclaim the first my deed, the last thy voluntary——."

"Proclaim it!"—she interrupted him, with her eyes flashing bright indignation, and her lip curling with ineffable disdain; as she forgot all prudence in the scorn called forth by his injurious words—"Proclaim it to the world! who will believe it?"—

"The world. Frailty's name is woman!"—

"And Falsehood's—Catiline!"—

"By Hades!"—and he sprang upon her with a bound like that of a tiger, and twined his arms about her waist, clasping her to his breast with brutal violence, and striving to press his foul lips on her innocent mouth; but she, endowed with momentary strength, infinitely unwonted and unnatural, the strength of despair and frenzy, caught his bare throat with both her hands, and writhing herself back to the full length of her arms, uttered a volume of shrieks, so awfully shrill and piercing, that they struck terror into the souls of the brutal rebels without, and harrowed up the spirits of her friends, who lay concealed within earshot, waiting, now almost in despair, an opportunity to aid her.

So strong was the clutch which her small hands had fixed upon his throat, that ere he could release himself, sufficiently to draw a full breath, he was compelled to let her go; and ere he fully recovered himself, she had made a spring back toward the window, with the evident purpose of throwing herself out into the yawning gulf below it.

But something caught her eye which apparently deterred her, and turning her back upon it quickly, she faced her persecutor once again.

At this moment, there was a loud and angry bustle in the outer court, immediately followed by a violent knocking at the door; but so terrible was the excitement of both these human beings, her's the excitement of innocence in trial, his of atrocity triumphant, that neither heard it, though it was sudden and strong enough to have startled any sleepers, save those of the grave.

"Ha! but this charms me! I knew not that you had so much of the Tigress to fit you for the Tiger's mate. But what a fool you are to waste your breath in yells and your strength in struggles, like to those, when there are none to hear, or to witness them."

"Witnesses are found to all crimes right early and avengers!" she exclaimed with the high mien of a prophetess; and still that vehement knocking continued, unheeded as the earthquake which reeled unnoticed beneath the feet of the combatants at Thrasymene.

"To this at least there are no witnesses! there shall be no avengers!"

"The Gods are my witnesses! shall be my avengers!"

"Tush! there are no Gods, Julia!"

And again he rushed on her and caught her in his arms. But as he spoke those impious words, sprang to do that atrocious deed, a witness was found, and it might be an avenger.

Unnoticed by the traitor in the fierce whirlwind of his passion, that hunter boy stood forth on the further brink; revealed, a boy no longer; for the Phrygian bonnet had fallen off, and the redundant raven tresses of a girl flowed back on the wind. Her attitude and air were those of Diana as she bent her good bow against the ravisher Orion. Her right foot advanced firmly, her right hand drawn back to the ear, her fine eye glaring upon the arrow which bore with unerring aim full on the breast of her own corrupter, her own father, Catiline.

Who had more wrongs to avenge than Lucia?

Another second, and the shaft would have quivered in the heart of the arch villain, sped by the hand from which he deserved it the most dearly. The room within was brighter than day from the red torch light which filled it, falling full on the gaunt form and grim visage of the monster. Her hand was firm, her eye steady, her heart pitiless. But in the better course of her changed life, heaven spared her the dread crime of parricide.

Just as the chord was at the tightest, just as the feathers quivered, and the barb thrilled, about to leap from the terse string, the tall form of the soldier sprang up into the clear moonlight from the underwood, and crying "Hold! hold!" mastered her bowhand, with the speed of light, and dragged her down into the covert.

Well was it that he did so. For just as Catiline seized Julia the second time in his resistless grasp, and ere his lips had contaminated her sweet mouth, the giant Crispus, who had so long been knocking unheeded, rushed into the room, and seized his leader by the shoulder unseen, until he literally touched him.

"Another time for this;" he said, "Catiline. There are tidings from Rome; which—"

"To Tartarus with thy tidings! Let them tarry!"

"They will not tarry, Catiline," replied the smith, who was as pale as a ghost and almost trembling—"least of all for such painted woman's flesh as this is!"

"Get thee away! It were better, wiser, safer to stand between the Lion and his prey, than between Catiline and Julia."

"Then have it!" shouted the smith. "All is discovered! all undone! Lentulus and Cethegus, Gabinius and Statilius, and Cparius all dead by the hangman's noose in the Tullianum!"

"The idiots! is that all? thy precious tidings! See! how I will avenge them." And he struggled to shake himself free from the grasp of Crispus.

But the smith held him firmly, and replied, "It is not all, Catiline. Metellus Celer is within ten leagues of the camp, at the foot of the mountains. We have no retreat left into Gaul. Come! come! speak to the soldiers! You can deal with this harlotry hereafter."

Catiline glared upon him, as if he would have stabbed him to the heart; but seeing the absolute necessity of enquiring into the truth of this report, he turned to leave the room.

"The Gods be praised! the Gods have spoken loud! The Gods have saved me!" cried Julia falling on her knees. "Are there no Gods now, O Catiline?"

"To Hades! with thy Gods!" and, striking the unhappy girl a coward blow, which felled her to the ground senseless, he rushed from the room with his confederate in crime, barring the outer door behind him.



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RESCUE.

Speed, Malise, speed, the dun deer's hide On fleeter foot was never tied. LADY OF THE LAKE.

Scarcely had the door closed behind Catiline, who rushed forth torch in hand, as if goaded by the furies of Orestes, when half a dozen stout men, sheathed in the full armor of Roman legionaries, sprang out of the brushwood on the gorge's brink, and seizing the ropes which had hung idle during that critical hour, hauled on them with such energetical and zealous power, that the ladder was drawn across the chasm with almost lightning speed.

The hooks, with which its outer end was garnished, caught in the crevices of the ruined wall, and a slender communication was established, although the slight structure which bridged the abyss was scarcely capable of supporting the weight of a human being.

The soldiers, accustomed, as all Roman soldiers were, to all the expediences and resources of warfare, had prepared planks which were to be run forward on the ladder, in order to construct a firm bridge. For the plan of the besiegers, until interrupted by Catiline's arrival, had been to take the stronghold in reverse, while a false attack in front should be in progress, and throwing ten or twelve stout soldiers into the heart of the place, to make themselves masters of it by a coup-de-main.

This well-devised scheme being rendered unfeasible by the sudden charge of Catiline's horse, and the rout of the legionaries, the small subaltern's detachment which had been sent round under Lucia's guidance—for it was she, who had discerned the means of passing the chasm, while lying in wait to assist Julia, and disclosed it to the centurion commanding—had been left alone, and isolated, its line of retreat cut off, and itself without a leader.

The singular scenes, however, which they had witnessed, the interest which almost involuntarily they had been led to take in the fate of the fair girl, her calm and dauntless fortitude, and above all the atrocious villainy of Catiline, had inspired every individual of that little band with an heroic resolution to set their lives upon a cast, in order to rescue one who to all of them was personally unknown.

In addition to this, the discovery of Lucia's sex—for they had believed her to be what she appeared, a boy—which followed immediately on the loss of her Phrygian bonnet, and the story of her bitter wrongs, which had taken wind, acted as a powerful incentive to men naturally bold and enterprising.

For it is needless to add, that with the revelation of her sex, that of her character as the arch-traitor's child and victim went, as it were, hand in hand.

They had resolved, therefore, on rescuing the one, and revenging the other of these women, at any risk to themselves whatsoever; and now having waited their opportunity with the accustomed patience of Roman veterans, they acted upon it with their habitual skill and celerity.

But rapid as were their movements, they were outstripped by the almost superhuman agility of Lucia, who, knowing well the character of the human fiend with whom they had to contend, his wondrous promptitude in counsel, his lightning speed in execution, was well assured that there was not one moment to be lost, if they would save Arvina's betrothed bride from a fate worse than many deaths.

As soon therefore as she saw the hooks of the scaling ladder catch firm hold of the broken wall, before a single plank had been laid over its frail and distant rungs, she bounded over it with the light and airy foot of a practised dancer—finding account at that perilous moment in one of those indelicate accomplishments in which she had been instructed for purposes the basest and most horrible.

Accustomed as they were to deeds of energy and rapid daring, the stout soldiers stood aghast; for, measuring the action by their own weight and ponderous armature, they naturally overrated its peril to one so slightly made as Lucia.

And yet the hazard was extreme, for not taking it into account that a single slip or false step must precipitate her into the abyss, the slender woodwork of the ladder actually bent as she alighted on it, from each of her long airy bounds.

It was but a second, however, in which she glanced across it, darted through the small embrasure, and was lost to the eyes of the men within the darkness of the old barrack.

Astonished though they were at the girl's successful daring, the soldiers were not paralyzed at all, nor did they cease from their work.

In less than a minute after she had entered the window, a board was thrust forward, running upon the framework of the ladder, and upon that a stout plank, two feet in breadth, capable of supporting, if necessary, the weight of several armed men.

Nor had this bridge been established many seconds before the soldier in command ran forward upon it, and met Lucia at the embrasure, bearing with strength far greater than her slight form and unmuscular limbs appeared to promise, the still senseless form of Julia.

Catching her from the arms of Lucia, the robust legionary cast the fainting girl across his shoulder as though she had been a feather; and rushed back with her toward his comrades, crying aloud in haste alarm—

"Quick! quick! follow me quick, Lucia. I hear footsteps, they are coming!"—

The caution was needless, for almost outstripping the heavy soldier, the fleet-footed girl stood with him on the farther bank.

Yet had it come a moment later, it would have come all too late.

For having with his wonted celerity ascertained the truth of these fatal tidings, and ordered the body of horse whom he had brought up with him, and who had returned from pursuing the infantry, on seeing a larger body coming up from Antonius' army, to return with all speed to the camp of Manlius, retaining only a dozen troopers as a personal escort, Catiline had come back to bear off his lovely captive.

The clang of his haughty step had reached the ears of the legionary just as he drew poor Julia, unconscious of her rescue, through the barrack window; and as they stood on the brink of the ravine, thus far in safety, the red glare of the torches streaming through the embrasures, announced the arrival of their enemies, within almost arm's length of them.

The awful burst of imprecations which thundered from the lips of Catiline, as he perceived that his victim had been snatched from him, struck awe even into the hearts of those brave veterans.

A tiger robbed of its young is but a weak and poor example of the frantic, ungovernable, beast-like rage which appeared to prevail entirely above all senses, all consideration, and all reason.

"May I perish ill! may I die crucified! may the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field devour me, if she so escape!" he shouted; and perceiving the means by which she had been carried off, he called loudly for his men to follow, and was in the very act of leaping out from the embrasure upon the bridge, which they had not time to withdraw, when one of the legionaries spurned away the frail fabric with his foot, and drawing his short falchion severed the cords which secured it, at a single blow.

Swinging off instantly in mid air, it was dashed heavily against the rocky wall of the precipice, and, dislodged by the shock, the planks went thundering down into the torrent, at the bottom of the gorge; while upheld by the hooks to the stone window sill, the ladder hung useless on Catiline's side of the chasm, all communication thus completely interrupted.

At the same moment three of the heavy pila, which were the peculiar missiles of the legion, were hurled by as many stout arms at the furious desperado; but it was not his fate so to perish. One of the pondrous weapons hurtled so close to his temple that the keen head razed the skin, the others, blunted or shivered against the sides or lintel of the window, fell harmless into the abyss.

"Thou fool!" cried the man who had rescued Julia, addressing him who had cut away the bridge, "thou shouldst have let him reach the middle, ere thou didst strike that blow. Then would he have lain there now," and he pointed downward with his finger into the yawning gulf.

"I do not know," replied the other. "By the Gods! Catiline is near enough to me, when he is twenty paces distant."

"Thou art right, soldier, and didst well and wisely," said Lucia, hastily. "Hadst thou tarried to strike until he reached the middle, thou never wouldst have stricken at all. One foot without that window, he would have cleared that chasm, as easily as I would leap a furrow. But come! come! come! we must not loiter, nor lose one instant. He will not so submit to be thwarted, I have two horses by the roadside yonder. Their speed alone shall save us."

"Right! right!" replied the soldier, "lead to them quickly. It is for life or death! Hark! he is calling his men now to horse. We shall have a close run for it, by Hercules!"—

"And we?"—asked one of the veterans—

"Disperse yourselves among the hills, and make your way singly to the camp. He will not think of you, with us before him!"—

"Farewell! The Gods guide and guard thee!"—

"We shall much need, I fear, their guidance!" answered the legionary, setting off at a swift pace, still bearing Julia, who was now beginning to revive in the fresh air, following hard on Lucia, who ran, literally like the wind, to the spot where she had tied her own beautiful white Ister, and another horse, a powerful and well-bred Thracian charger, to the stems of two chesnut trees, in readiness for any fortunes.

Rapidly as the soldier ran, still the light-footed girl outstripped him, and when he reached the sandy road, she had already loosened the reins from the trees to which they had been attached, and held them in readiness.

"Mount, mount" cried Lucia, "for your life! I will help you to lift her."

"I am better now," exclaimed Julia—"Oh ye Gods! and safe too! I can help myself now! and in an instant she was seated behind the stout man-at-arms, and clinging with both hands to his sword belt.

"If you see me no more, as I think you will not, Julia, tell Paullus, Lucia saved you, and—died, for love of him! Now—ride! ride! ride! for your life ride!"

And giving their good horses head they sprang forth, plying the rein and scourge, at headlong speed.

As they ascended the first little hillock, they saw the troopers of Catiline pouring out of the watch-tower gate, and thundering down the slope toward the bridge, with furious shouts, at a rate scarcely inferior to their own.

They had but one hope of safety. To reach the little bridge and pass it before their pursuers should gain it, and cut off their retreat toward their friends, whom they knew to be nigh at hand; but to do so appeared well nigh impossible.

It was a little in their favor that the steeds of Catiline's troopers had been harassed by a long and unusually rapid night march, while their own were fresh and full of spirit; but this advantage was neutralized at least by the double weight which impeded the progress and bore down the energies of the noble Thracian courser, bearing Julia and the soldier.

Again it was in their favor that the road on their side the chasm was somewhat shorter and much more level than that by which Catiline and his riders were straining every nerve, gallopping on a parallel line with the tremulous and excited fugitives; but this advantage also was diminished by the fact that they must turn twice at right angles—once to gain the bridge, and once more into the high road beyond it—while the rebels had a straight course, though down a hill side so steep that it might well be called precipitous.

The day had by this time broken, and either party could see the other clearly, even to the dresses of the men and the colors of the horses, not above the sixth part of a mile being occupied by the valley of the stream dividing the two roads.

For life! fire flashed from the flinty road at every bound of the brave coursers, and blood flew from every whirl of the knotted thong; but gallantly the high-blooded beasts answered it. At every bound they gained a little on their pursuers, whose horses foamed and labored down the abrupt descent, one or two of them falling and rolling over their riders, so steep was the declivity.

For life! Catiline had gained the head of his party, and his black horse had outstripped them by several lengths.

If the course had been longer the safety of the fugitives would have been now certain; but so brief was the space and so little did they gain in that awful race, that the nicest eye hardly could have calculated which first would reach the bridge.

So secure of his prize was Catiline, that his keen blade was already out, and as he bowed over his charger's neck, goring his flanks with his bloody spurs, he shouted in his hoarse demoniacal accents, "Victory and vengeance!"

Still, hopeful and dauntless, the stout legionary gallopped on—"Courage!" he exclaimed, "courage, lady, we shall first cross the bridge!"—

Had Lucia chosen it, with her light weight and splendid horsemanship, she might easily have left Julia and the soldier, easily have crossed the defile in advance of Catiline, easily have escaped his vengeance. But she reined in white Ister, and held him well in hand behind the others, muttering to herself in low determined accents, "She shall be saved, but my time is come!"

Suddenly there was a hasty shout of alarm from the troopers on the other side, "Hold, Catiline! Rein up! Rein up!" and several of the foremost riders drew in their horses. Within a minute all except Catiline had halted.

"They see our friends! they are close at hand! We are saved! by the Immortal Gods! we are saved!" cried the legionary, with a cry of triumph.

But in reply, across the narrow gorge, came the hoarse roar of Catiline, above the din of his thundering gallop.—"By Hades! Death! or vengeance!"

"Ride! ride!" shrieked Lucia from behind, "Ride, I say, fool! you are not saved! He will not halt for a beat when revenge spurs him! For your life! ride!"

It was a fearful crisis.

The Thracian charger reached the bridge. The hollow arch resounded but once under his clanging hoofs—the second stride cleared it. He wheeled down the road, and Julia, pale as death, whose eyes had been closed in the agony of that fearful expectation, unclosed them at the legionary's joyous shout, but closed them again in terror and despair with a faint shriek, as they met the grim countenance of Catiline, distorted with every hellish passion, and splashed with blood gouts from his reeking courser's side, thrust forward parallel nearly to the black courser's foamy jaws—both nearly within arm's length of her, as it appeared to her excited fancy.

"We are lost! we are lost!" she screamed.

"We are saved! we are saved!" shouted the soldier as he saw coming up the road at a gallop to meet them, the bronze casques and floating horse-hair crests, and scarlet cloaks, of a whole squadron of legionary cavalry, arrayed beneath a golden eagle—the head of their column scarcely distant three hundred yards.

But they were not saved yet, nor would have been—for Catiline's horse was close upon their croupe and his uplifted blade almost flashed over them—when, with a wild cry, Lucia dashed her white Ister at full speed, as she crossed the bridge, athwart the counter of black Erebus.

The thundering speed at which the black horse came down the hill, and the superior weight of himself and his rider, hurled the white palfrey and the brave girl headlong; but his stride was checked, and, blown as he was, he stumbled, and rolled over, horse and man.

A minute was enough to save them, and before Lucia had regained her feet, the ranks of the new comers had opened to receive the fugitives, and had halted around them, in some slight confusion.

"The Gods be blessed for ever!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, and raising her eyes to heaven. "I have saved her!"

"And lost thyself, thrice miserable fool!" hissed a hoarse well known voice in her ear, as a heavy hand seized her by the shoulder, and twisted her violently round.

She stood face to face with Catiline, and met his horrid glare of hate with a glance prouder than his own and brighter. She smiled triumphantly, as she said in a clear high voice,

"I have saved her!"

"For which, take thy reward, in this, and this, and this!"

And with the words he dealt her three stabs, the least of which was mortal; but, even in that moment of dread passion, with fiendish ingenuity he endeavored to avoid giving her a wound that should be directly fatal.

"There writhe, and howl, 'till slow death relieve you!"

"Meet end to such beginning!" cried the unhappy girl. "Adulterous parent! incestuous seducer! kindred slayer! ha! ha! ha! ha!" and with a wild laugh she fell to the ground and lay with her eyes closed, motionless and for the moment senseless.

But he, with his child's blood smoking on his hand, shook his sword aloft fiercely against the legionaries, and leaping on his black horse which had arisen from the ground unhurt by its fall, gallopped across the bridge; and plunging through the underwood into the deep chesnut forest was lost to the view of the soldiers, who had spurred up in pursuit of him, that they abandoned it ere long as hopeless.

It was not long that Lucia lay oblivious of her sufferings. A sense of fresh coolness on her brow, and the checked flow of the blood, which gushed from those cruel wounds, were the first sensations of which she became aware.

But, as she opened her eyes, they met well known and loving faces; and soft hands were busy about her bleeding gashes; and hot tears were falling on her poor pallid face from eyes that seldom wept.

Julia was kneeling at her side, Paullus Arvina was bending over her in speechless gratitude, and sorrow; and the stern cavaliers of the legion, unused to any soft emotions, stood round holding their chargers' bridles with frowning brows, and lips quivering with sentiments, which few of them had experienced since the far days of their gentler boyhood.

"Oh! happy," she exclaimed, in a soft low tone, "how happy it is so to die! and in dying to see thee, Paullus."

"Oh! no! no! no!" cried Julia, "you must not, shall not die! my friend, my sister! O, tell her, Paullus, that she will not die, that she will yet be spared to our prayers, our love, our gratitude, our veneration."

But Paullus spoke not; a soldier, and a man used to see death in all shapes in the arena, he knew that there was no hope, and, had his life depended on it, he could not, at that moment have deceived her.

Little, however, cared the dying girl for that; even if she had heard or comprehended the appeal. Her ears, her mind, were full of other thoughts, and a bright beautiful irradiation played over her wan lips and ashy features, as she cried joyously, although her voice was very tremulous and weak.

"Paullus, do you hear that? her friend! her sister! Paullus, Paullus, do you hear that? Julia calls me her friend—me, me her sister! me the disgraced—"

"Peace! peace! Dear Lucia! you must not speak such words!" said Paullus. "Be your past errors what they may—and who am I, that I should talk of errors?—this pure high love—this delicate devotion—this death most heroical and glorious no! no! I cannot—" and the strong man bowed his head upon his hands, and burst into an agony of tears and passion.

No revelation from on high had taught those poor Romans, that 'joy shall be in heaven, over the sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.'

Yet groping darkly on their way by the dim lights of nature and philosophy, they had perceived, at least, that it is harder far for one corrupted from her very childhood, corrupted by the very parents who should have guided, with all her highest qualities of mind and body perverted studiously till they had hardened into vices, to raise herself erect at once from the slough of sensuality and sin, and spring aloft, as the butterfly transmuted from the grub, into the purity and loveliness of virtue—than for one, who hath known no trial, suffered no temptation, to hold the path of rectitude unswerving.

And Julia, whose high soul and native delicacy were all incapable of comprehending the nature, much less the seductions, of such degradation, as that poor victim of parental villainy had undergone, saw clearly and understood at a glance, the difficulty, the gloriousness, the wonder of that beautiful regeneration.

"No, no. Dear Lucia, dear sister, if you love that name," she said in soothing tones, holding her cold hands clasped in her own quivering fingers, "indeed, indeed you must not think or speak of yourself thus. Your sins, if you have sinned, are the sins of others, your virtues and your excellence, all, all your own. I have heard many times of women, who have fallen from high virtue, in spite of noble teachings, in spite of high examples, and whom neither love nor shame could rescue from pollution—but never, never, did I hear of one who so raised herself, alone, unaided, in spite of evil teaching, in spite the atrocity of others, in spite of infamous examples, to purity, devotion such as thine! But, fear not, Lucia. Fear not, dearest girl, you shall not die, believe—"

"I do not fear, I desire it," said the dying girl, who was growing weaker and fainter every moment. "To a life, and a love like mine, both guilty, both unhappy, death is a refuge, not a terror; and if there be, as you believe, who are so wise and virtuous, a place beyond the grave, where souls parted here on earth, may meet and dwell in serene and tranquil bliss, perhaps, I say, perhaps, Julia, this death may compensate that life—this blood may wash away the sin, the shame, the pollution."

"Believe it, O believe it!" exclaimed Julia earnestly. "How else should the Gods be all-great and all-wise; since vice triumphs often here, and virtue pines in sorrow. Be sure, I say, be sure of it, there is a place hereafter, where all sorrows shall be turned to joy, all sufferings compensated, all inequalities made even. Be sure of that, dear Lucia."

"I am sure of it," she replied, a brighter gleam of pleasure crossing her features, on which the hues of death were fast darkening. "I am sure of it now. I think my mind grows clearer, as my body dies away. I see—I see—there is God! Julia—there is an hereafter—an eternity—rest for the weary, joy for the woful! yes! yes! I see—I feel it. We shall meet, Julia. We shall meet, Paullus, Paullus!" And she sank back fainting and overpowered upon Julia's bosom.

In a moment or two, however, she opened her eyes again, but it was clear that the spirit was on the point of taking its departure.

"I am going!" she said in a very low voice. "I am going. His sword was more merciful than its master.—Bury me in a nameless grave. Let no stone tell the tale of unhappy, guilty Lucia. But come sometimes, Julia, Paullus, and look where I lie; and sometimes—will you not sometimes remember Lucia?"

"You shall live in our souls forever!" replied Julia, stooping down to kiss her.

"In your arms, Paullus, in your arms! will you not let me, Julia? 'Twere sweet to die in your arms, Paullus."—

"How can you ask?" cried Julia, who scarce could speak for the tears and sobs, which almost choked her.

"Here, Paullus, take her, gently, gently."

"Oh! sweet—oh! happy!" she murmured, as she leaned her head against his heart, and fixed her glazing eyes upon his features, and clasped his hand with her poor dying fingers. "She told you, Paullus, that for your love I died to save her!"

"She did—she did—dear, dearest Lucia!"—

"Kiss me," she whispered; "I am going very fast. Kiss me on the brow, Paullus, where years ago you kissed me, when I was yet an innocent child." Then, fancying that he hesitated, she cried, "you will let him kiss me, now, will you not, Julia? He is yours"—

"Oh! kiss her, kiss her, Paullus," exclaimed Julia eagerly, "how could you fancy, Lucia, that I should wish otherwise? kiss her lips, not her brow, Paullus Arvina."

"Kiss me first thou, dear Julia. I may call you dear."

"Dear Lucia, dearest sister!"

And the pure girl leaned over and pressed a long kiss on the cold lips of the unhappy, guilty, regenerated being, whose death had won for her honor, and life, and happiness.

"Now, Paullus, now," cried Lucia, raising herself from his bosom by a last feeble effort, and stretching out her arms, "now, ere it be too late!"—

He bowed down to her and kissed her lips, and she clasped her arms close about his neck, and returned that last chaste caress, murmuring "Paullus, mine own in death, mine own, own Paullus!"—

There was a sudden rigor, a passing tremulous spasm, which ran through her whole frame for a moment—her arms clasped his neck more tightly than before, and then released their hold, all listless and unconscious—her head fell back, with the eyes glazed and visionless, and the white lips half open.

"She is dead, Julia!" exclaimed Paullus, who was not ashamed to weep at that sad close of so young and sorrowful a life, "dead for our happiness!"

"Hush! hush!" cried Julia, who was still gazing on the face of the dead—"There is a change—see! see! how beautiful, how tranquil!"—

And in truth a sweet placid smile had settled about the pallid mouth, and nothing can be conceived more lovely than the calm, holy, pure expression which breathed from every lineament of the lifeless countenance.

"She is gone, peace to her manes."

"She is at rest, now, Paullus, she is happy!" murmured Julia. "How excellent she was, how true, how brave, how devoted! Oh! yes! I doubt not, she is happy."

"The Gods grant it!" he replied fervently. "But I have yet a duty," and drawing his short straight sword he severed one long dark curl from the lifeless head, and raising it aloft in his left hand, while with the right he pointed heavenward the gleaming steel, "Ye Gods!" he cried, "supernal and infernal! and ye spirits and powers, shades of the mighty dead! Hear earth, and heaven, and thou Tartarus! by this good steel, by this right hand, in presence of this sacred dead, I swear, I devote Catiline and his hated head to vengeance! By this sword may he perish; may this hair be steeped in his lifeblood; may he know himself, when dying, the victim of my vengeance—may dogs eat his body—and his unburied spirit know neither Tartarus nor Elysium!"—

It was strange, but as he ceased from that wild imprecation, a faint flash of lightning veined the remote horizon, and a low clap of thunder rumbled afar off, echoing among the hills—perchance the last of a storm, unheard before and unnoticed by the distracted minds of the spectators of that scene.

But the superstitious Romans accepted it as an omen.

"Thunder!"—cried one.

"The Gods have spoken!"—

"I hail the omen!" exclaimed Paullus, sheathing his sword, and thrusting the tress of hair into his bosom. "By my hand shall he perish!"

And thenceforth, it was believed generally by the soldiers, that in the coming struggle Catiline was destined to fall, and by the hand of Paul Arvina.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE EVE OF BATTLE.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. MACBETH.

Nearly a fortnight had elapsed since the rescue of Julia, and the sad death of Catiline's unhappy daughter, and yet the battle which was daily and hourly expected, had not been fought.

With rare ability and generalship, Catiline had avoided an action with the troops of Antonius, marching and countermarching among the rugged passes of the Appennines, now toward Rome, now toward Gaul, keeping the enemy constantly on the alert, harassing the consul's outposts, threatening the city itself with an assault, and maintaining with studious skill that appearance of mystery, which is so potent an instrument whether to terrify or to fascinate the vulgar mind.

During this period the celerity of his movements had been such that his little host appeared to be almost ubiquitous, and men knew not where to look for his descent, or how to anticipate the blow, which he evidently had it in contemplation to deliver.

In the meantime, he had given such of his adherents as fled from Rome immediately on the execution of the conspirators, an opportunity to join him, and many had in fact done so with their clients, and bands of gladiators.

The disaffected of the open country had all united themselves to him; and having commenced operations with a force not exceeding two thousand men, he was now at the head of six times that number, whom he had formed into two complete legions, and disciplined them with equal assiduity and success.

Now, however, the time had arrived when it was for his advantage no longer to avoid an encounter with the troops of the commonwealth; for having gained all that he proposed to himself by his dilatory movements and Fabian policy, time namely for the concentration of his adherents, and opportunity to discipline his men, he now began to suffer from the inconveniences of the system.

Unsupplied with magazines, or any regular supply of provisions, his army like a flight of locusts had stripped the country bare at every halting place, and that wild hill country had few resources, even when shorn by the licentious band of his desperadoes, upon which to support an army. The consequence, therefore, of his incessant hurrying to and fro, was that the valleys of the mountain chain which he had made the theatre of his campaign, were now utterly exhausted; that his beasts of burden were broken down and foundered; and that the line of his march might be traced by the carcasses of mules and horses which had given out by the wayside, and by the flights of carrion birds which hovered in clouds about his rear, prescient of the coming carnage.

His first attempt was to elude Metellus Celer, who had marched down from the Picene district on the Adriatic sea, with great rapidity, and taken post at the foot of the mountains, on the head waters of the streams which flow down into the great plain of the Po.

In this attempt he had been frustrated by the ability of the officer who was opposed to him, who had raised no less than three legions fully equipped for war.

By him every movement of the conspirator was anticipated, and met by some corresponding measure, which rendered it abortive. Nor was it, any longer, difficult for him to penetrate the designs of Catiline, since the peasantry and mountaineers, who had throughout that district been favorable to the conspiracy in the first instance, and who were prepared to favor any design which promised to deliver them from inexorable taxation, had been by this time so unmercifully plundered and harassed by that banditti, that they were now as willing to betray Catiline to the Romans, as they had been desirous before of giving the Romans into his hands at disadvantage.

Fully aware of all these facts, and knowing farther that Antonius had now come up so close to his rear, with a large army, that he was in imminent danger of being surrounded and taken between two fires, the desperate traitor suddenly took the boldest and perhaps the wisest measure.

Wheeling directly round he turned his back toward Gaul, whither he had been marching, and set his face toward the city. Then making three great forced marches he came upon the army of Antonius, as it was in column of march, among the heights above Pistoria, and had there been daylight for the attack when the heads of the consul's cohorts were discovered, it is possible that he might have forced him to fight at disadvantage, and even defeated him.

In that case there would have been no force capable of opposing him on that side Rome, and every probability would have been in favor of his making himself master of the city, a success which would have gone far to insure his triumph.

It was late in the evening, however, when the hostile armies came into presence, each of the other, and on that account, and, perhaps, for another and stronger reason, Catiline determined on foregoing the advantages of a surprise.

Caius Antonius, the consul in command, it must be remembered, had been one of the original confederates in Catiline's first scheme of massacre and conflagration, which had been defeated by the unexpected death of Curius Piso.

Detached from the conspiracy only by Cicero's rare skill, and disinterested cession to him of the rich province of Macedonia, Antonius might therefore justly be supposed unlikely to urge matters to extremities against his quondam comrades; and it was probably in no small degree on this account that Catiline had resolved on trying the chances of battle rather against an old friend, than against an enemy so fixed, and of so resolute patrician principles as Metellus Celer.

He thought, moreover, that it was just within the calculation of chances that Antonius might either purposely mismanoeuvre, so as to allow him to descend upon Rome without a battle, or adopt such tactics as should give him a victory.

He halted his army, therefore, in a little gorge of the hills opening out upon a level plain, flanked on the left by the steep acclivities of the mountain, which towered in that direction, ridge above ridge, inaccessible, and on the right by a rugged and rocky spur, jutting out from the same ridge, by which his line of battle would be rendered entirely unassailable on the flanks and rear.

In this wild spot, amid huge gray rocks, and hanging woods of ancient chesnuts and wild olive, as gray and hoary as the stones among which they grew, he had pitched his camp, and now lay awaiting in grim anticipation what the morrow should bring forth; while, opposite to his front, on a lower plateau of the same eminence, the great army of the consul might be descried, with its regular entrenchments and superb array of tents, its forests of gleaming spears, and its innumerable ensigns, glancing and waving in the cold wintry moonshine.

The mind of the traitor was darker and more gloomy than its wont. He had supped with his officers, Manlius and a nobleman of Fsul, whose name the historian has not recorded, who held the third rank in the rebel army, but their fare had been meagre and insipid, their wines the thin vintage of that hill country; a little attempt at festivity had been made, but it had failed altogether; the spirits of the men, although undaunted and prepared to dare the utmost, lacked all that fiery and enthusiastic ardor, which kindles patriot breasts with a flame so pure and pervading, on the eve of the most desperate encounters.

Enemies of their country, enemies almost of mankind, these desperadoes were prepared to fight desperately, to fight unto the death, because to win was their only salvation, and, if defeated, death their only refuge.

But for them there was no grand heart-elevating spur to action, no fame to be won, no deathless name to be purchased—their names deathless already, as they knew too well, through black infamy!—no grateful country's praises, to be gained cheaply by a soldier's death!—no! there were none of these things.

All their excitements were temporal, sensual, earthy. The hope to conquer, the lust to bask in the sunshine of power, the desire to revel at ease in boundless luxury and riot.

And against these, the rewards of victory, what were the penalties of defeat—death, infamy, the hatred and the scorn of ages.

The wicked have no friends. Never, perhaps, was this fact exemplified more clearly than on that battle eve. Community of guilt, indeed, bound those vicious souls together—community of interests, of fears, of perils, held them in league—yet, feeling as they did feel that their sole chance of safety lay in the maintenance of that confederation, each looked with evil eyes upon his neighbor, each almost hated the others, accusing them internally of having drawn them into their present perilous peril, of having failed at need, or of being swayed by selfish motives only.

So little truth there is in the principle, which Catiline had set forth in his first address to his banded parricides, "that the community of desires and dislikes constitutes, in one word, true friendship!"—

And now so darkly did their destiny lower on those depraved and ruined spirits, that even their recklessness, that last light which emanates from crime in despair, had burned out, and the furies of conscience,—that conscience which they had so often stifled, so often laughed to scorn, so often drowned with riot and debauch, so often silenced by fierce sophistry—now hunted them, harpies of the soul, worse than the fabulous Eumenides of parricide Orestes.

The gloomy meal was ended; the parties separated, all of them, as it would seem, relieved by the termination of those mock festivities which, while they brought no gayity to the heart, imposed a necessity of seeming mirthful and at ease, when they were in truth disturbed by dark thoughts of the past, and terrible forebodings of the future.

As soon as his guests had departed and the traitor was left alone, he arose from his seat, according to his custom, and began to pace the room with vehement and rapid strides, gesticulating wildly, and muttering sentences, the terrible oaths and blasphemies of which were alone audible.

Just at this time a prolonged flourish of trumpets from without, announced the changing of the watch. It was nine o'clock. "Ha! the third hour!" already, he exclaimed, starting as he heard the wild blast, "and Chrea not yet returned from Antonius. Can it be that the dog freedman has played me false, or can Antonius have seized him as a hostage?—I will go forth," he added, after a short pause, "I will go forth, and observe the night."

And throwing a large cloak over his armor, and putting a broad-brimmed felt hat upon his head, in lieu of the high crested helmet, he sallied out into the camp, carrying in addition to his sword a short massive javelin in his right hand.

The night was extremely dark and murky. The moon had not yet risen, and but for the camp-fires of the two armies, it would have been impossible to walk any distance without the aid of a torch or lantern. A faint lurid light was dispersed from these, however, over the whole sky, and thence was reflected weakly on the rugged and broken ground which lay between the entrenched lines of the two hosts.

For a while, concealed entirely by his disguise, Catiline wandered through the long streets of tents, listening to the conversation of the soldiers about the watch-fires, their strange superstitious legends, and old traditionary songs; and, to say truth, the heart of that desperate man was somewhat lightened by his discovery that the spirits of the men were alert and eager for the battle, their temper keen and courageous, their confidence in the prowess and ability of their chief unbounded.

"He is the best soldier, since the days of Sylla," said one gray-headed veteran, whose face was scarred by the Pontic scymetars of Mithridates.

"He is a better soldier in the field, than ever Sylla was, by Hercules!" replied another.

"Aye! in the field! Sylla, I have heard say, rarely unsheathed his sword, and never led his men to hand and hand encounter," interposed a younger man, than the old colonists to whom he spoke.

"It is the head to plan, not the hand to execute, that makes the great captain. Caius, or Marcus, Titus or Tullus, can any one of them strike home as far, perhaps farther, than your Syllas or your Catilines."

"By Mars! I much doubt it!" cried another. "I would back Catiline with sword and buckler against the stoutest and the deftest gladiator that ever wielded blade. He is as active and as strong as a Libyan tiger."

"Aye! and as merciless."

"May the foe find him so to-morrow!"

"To-morrow, by the Gods! I wish it were to-morrow. It is cold work this, whereas, to-morrow night, I promise you, we shall be ransacking Antonius' camp, with store of choice wines, and rare viands."

"But who shall live to share them is another question."

"One which concerns not those who win."

"And by the God of Battles! we will do that to-morrow, let who may fall asleep, and who may keep awake to tell of it."

"A sound sleep to the slumberers, a merry rouse to the quick boys, who shall keep waking!" shouted another, and the cups were brimmed, and quaffed amid a storm of loud tumultuous cheering.

Under cover of this tumult, Catiline withdrew from the neighborhood, into which he had intruded with the stealthy pace of the beast to which the soldiers had compared him; and as he retired, he muttered to himself—"They are in the right frame of mind—of the right stuff to win—and yet—and yet—" he paused, and shook his head gloomily, as if he dared not trust his own lips to complete the sentence he had thus begun.

A moment afterward he exclaimed—"But Chrea! but Chrea! how long the villain tarries! By heaven! I will go forth and meet him."

And suiting the action to the word, he walked rapidly down the Quintana or central way to the Prtorian gate, there giving the word to the night-watch in a whisper, and showing his grim face to the half-astonished sentinel on duty, he passed out of the lines, alone and unguarded.

After advancing a few paces, he was challenged again by the pickets of the velites, who were thrust out in advance of the gates, and again giving the word was suffered to pass on, and now stood beyond the farthest outpost of his army.

Cautiously and silently, but with a swift step and determined air, he now advanced directly toward the front of the Roman entrenchments, which lay at a little more than a mile's distance from his own lines, and ere long reached a knoll or hillock which would by daylight have commanded a complete view of the whole area of the consul's camp, not being much out of a sling's cast from the ramparts.

The camp of the consul lay on the slope of a hill, so that the rear was considerably higher than the front; Catiline's eye, as he stood on that little eminence, could therefore clearly discern all the different streets and divisions of the camp, by the long lines of lamps and torches which blazed along the several avenues, and he gazed anxiously and long, at that strange silent picture.

With the exception of a slight clash and clang heard at times on the walls, where the skirmishers were going on their rounds, and the neigh of some restless charger, there was nothing that should have indicated to the ear that nearly twenty thousand men were sleeping among those tented lines of light—sleeping how many of them their last natural slumber.

No thoughts of that kind, however, intruded on the mind of the desperado.

Careless of human life, reckless of human suffering, he gazed only with his enquiring glance of profound penetration, hoping to espy something, whereby he might learn the fate—not of his messenger, that was to him a matter of supreme indifference—but of his message to Antonius.

Nor was he very long in doubt on this head; for while he was yet gazing, there was a bustle clearly perceptible about the prtorium, lights were seen flitting to and fro, voices were heard calling and answering to one another, and then the din of hammers and sounds of busy preparation.

This might have lasted perchance half an hour, to the great amazement of the traitor, who could not conceive the meaning of that nocturnal hubbub, when the clang of harness succeeded by the heavy regular tramp of men marching followed the turmoil, and, with many torches borne before them, the spears and eagle of a cohort were seen coming rapidly toward the Prtorian Gate.

"By Hecate!" cried Catiline—"what may this mean, I wonder. They are too few for an assault, nay! even for a false alarm. They have halted at the gate! By the Gods! they are filing out! they march hitherward! and lo! Manlius is aware of them. I will risk something to tarry here and watch them."

As he spoke, the cohort marched forward, straight on the hillock where he stood; and so far was it from seeking to conceal its whereabout, that its trumpets were blown frequently and loudly, as if to attract observation.

Meantime the camp of Catiline was on the alert also, the ramparts were lined with torches, by the red glare of which the legionaries might be seen mustering in dense array with shields in serried order, and spear heads twinkling in the torch-light.

As the cohorts approached the hill, Catiline fell back toward his own camp a little, and soon found shelter in a small thicket of holleys and wild myrtle which would effectually conceal him from the enemy, while he could observe their every motion from its safe covert.

On the hillock, the cohort halted—one manipule stood to its arms in front, while the rest formed a hollow square, all facing outward around its summit. The torches were lowered, so that with all his endeavors, Catiline could by no means discover what was in process within that guarded space.

Again the din of hammers rose on his ear, mixed now with groans and agonizing supplications, which waxed at length into a fearful howl, the utterance of one, past doubt, in more than mortal agony.

A strange and terrible suspicion broke upon Catiline, and the sweat started in beadlike drops from his sallow brow. It was not long ere that suspicion became certainty.

The clang of the hammers ceased; the wild howls sank into a continuous weak pitiful wailing. The creak of pullies and cordage, the shouts of men plying levers, and hauling ropes, succeeded, and slowly sullenly uprose, hardly seen in the black night air, a huge black cross. It reached its elevation, and was made fast in almost less time than it has taken to relate it, and instantly a pile of faggots which had been raised a short distance in front if it, and steeped in oil or some other unctuous matter, was set on fire.

A tall wavering snowwhite glare shot upward, and revealed, writhing in agony, and wailing wofully, the naked form of Chrea, bleeding at every pore from the effects of the merciless Roman scourging, nailed on the fatal cross.

So near was the little thicket in which Catiline lay, that he could mark every sinew of that gory frame working in agony, could read every twitch of those convulsed features.

Again the Roman trumpets were blown shrill and piercing, and a centurion stepping forward a little way in front of the advanced manipule, shouted at the pitch of his voice,

"THUS PERISH ALL THE MESSENGERS OF PARRICIDES AND TRAITORS!"

Excited, almost beyond his powers of endurance, by what he beheld and heard, the fierce traitor writhed in his hiding place, not sixty paces distant from the speaker, and gnashed his teeth in impotent malignity. His fingers griped the tough shaft of his massive pilum, as if they would have left their prints in the close-grained ash.

While that ferocious spirit was yet strong within him, the wretched freedman, half frenzied doubtless by his tortures, lifted his voice in a wild cry on his master—

"Catiline! Catiline!" he shrieked so thrillingly that every man in both camps heard every syllable distinct and clear. "Chrea calls on Catiline. Help! save! Avenge! Catiline! Catiline!"

A loud hoarse laugh burst from the Roman legionaries, and the centurion shouted in derision.

But at that instant the desperate spectator of that horrid scene sprang to his feet reckless, and shouting, as he leaped into the circle of bright radiance,

"Catiline hears Chrea, and delivers,"—hurled his massive javelin with deadly aim at his tortured servant.

It was the first blow Catiline ever dealt in mercy, and mercifully did it perform its errand.

The broad head was buried in the naked breast of the victim, and with one sob, one shudder, the spirit was released from the tortured clay.

Had a thunderbolt fallen among the cohort, the men could not have been more stunned—more astounded. Before they had sufficiently recovered from their shock to cast a missile at him, much less to start forth in pursuit, he was half way toward his own camp in safety; and ere long a prolonged burst, again and again reiterated, of joyous acclamations, told to the consular camp that the traitors knew and appreciated the strange and dauntless daring of their almost ubiquitous leader.

An hour afterward that leader was alone, in his tent, stretched on his couch, sleeping. But oh! that sleep—not gentle slumber, not nature's soft nurse—but nature's horrible convulsion! The eyes wide open, glaring, dilated in their sockets as of a strangled man—the brow beaded with black sweat drops—the teeth grinded together—the white lips muttering words too horrible to be recorded—the talon-like fingers clutching at vacancy.

It was too horrible to last. With a wild cry, "Lucia! Ha! Lucia! Fury! Avenger! Fiend!" he started to his feet, and glared around him with a bewildered eye, as if expecting to behold some ghastly supernatural visitant.

At length, he said, with a shudder—which he could not repress, "It was a dream! A dream—but ye Gods! what a dream! I will sleep no more—'till to-morrow. To-morrow," he repeated in a doubtful and enquiring tone, "to-morrow. If I should fall to-morrow, and such dreams come in that sleep which hath no waking, those dreams should be reality—that reality should be—HELL! I know not—I begin to doubt some things, which of yore I held certain! What if there should be Gods! avenging, everlasting torturers! If there should be a HELL! Ha! ha!" he laughed wildly and almost frantically. "Ha! ha! what matters it? Methinks this is a hell already!" and with the words he struck his hand heavily on his broad breast, and relapsed into gloomy and sullen meditation.

That night he slept no more, but strode backward and forward hour after hour, gnawing his nether lip till the blood streamed from the wounds inflicted by his unconscious teeth.

What awful and mysterious retribution might await him in the land of spirits, it is not for mortals to premise; but in this at least did he speak truth that night—conscience and crime may kindle in the human heart a Hell, which nothing can extinguish, so long as the soul live identical self-knowing, self-tormenting.



CHAPTER XX.

THE FIELD OF PISTORIA.

Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. MACBETH.

The first faint streaks of day were scarcely visible in the east, when Catiline, glad to escape the horrors which he had endured through the dark solitude of the night watches, issued from his tent, armed at all points, and every inch a captain.

All irresolution, all doubt, all nervousness had passed away. Energy and the strong excitement of the moment had overpowered conscience; and looking on his high, haughty port, his cold hard eye, his resolute impassive face, one would have said that man, at least, never trembled at realities, far less at shadows.

But who shall say in truth, which are the shadows of this world, which the realities? Many a one, it may be, will find to his sorrow, when the great day shall come, that the hard, selfish, narrow fact, the reality after which his whole life was a chase, a struggle, is but the shadow of a shade; the unsubstantial good, the scholar's or the poet's dream, which he scorned as an empty nothing, is an immortal truth, an everlasting and immutable reality.

Catiline shook at shadows, whom not the 'substance of ten thousand soldiers armed in proof,' could move, unless it were to emulation and defiance.

Which were in truth more real, more substantial causes of dismay, those shadows which appalled him, or those realities which he despised.

Ere that sun set, upon whose rising he gazed with an eye so calm and steadfast, that question, to him at least, was solved for ever—to us it is, perhaps, still a question.

But, at that moment, he thought nothing of the past, nothing of the future. The present claimed his whole undivided mind, and to the present he surrendered it, abstracted from all speculations, clear and unclouded, and pervading as an eagle's vision.

All his arrangements for the day had been made on the previous night so perfectly, that the troops were already filing out from the Prtorian gate in orderly array, and taking their ground on the little plain at the mouth of the gorge, in the order of battle which had been determined by the chiefs beforehand.

The space which he had selected whereon to receive the attack of Antonius' army, was indeed admirably chosen. It front it was so narrow, that eight cohorts, drawn up in a line ten deep, according to the Roman usage, filled it completely; behind these, the twelve remaining cohorts, which completed the force of his two legions, were arrayed in reserve in denser and more solid order, the interval between the mountains on the left, and the craggy hill on the right, which protected his flanks, being much narrower as it ascended toward the gorge in which the rebel camp was pitched.

In front of the army, there was a small plain, perfectly level, lying in an amphitheatre, as it were, of rocks and mountains, with neither thicket, brake, nor hillock to mar its smooth expanse or hinder the shock of armies, and extending perhaps half a mile toward the consular army. Below this, the ground fell off in a long abrupt and rugged declivity, somewhat exceeding a second half mile in length, with many thickets and clumps of trees on its slope, and the hillock at its foot, whereon still frowned Chrea's cross with the gory and hideous carcase, already blackened by the frosty night wind, hanging from its rough timbers, an awful omen to that army of desperate traitors.

Beyond that hillock, the ground swelled again into a lofty ridge, facing the mouth of the gorge in which Catiline had arrayed his army, with all advantages of position, sun and wind in his favor.

The sun rose splendid and unclouded, and as his long rays streamed through the hollows in the mountain top, nothing can be conceived more wildly romantic than the mountain scene, more gorgeous and exciting than the living picture, which they illuminated.

The hoary pinnacles of the huge mountains with their crowns of thunder-splintered rocks, the eyries of innumerable birds of prey, gleaming all golden in the splendors of the dawn—their long abrupt declivities, broken with crags, feathered with gray and leafless forests, and dotted here and there with masses of rich evergreens, all bathed in soft and misty light—and at the base of them the mouth of the deep gorge, a gulf of massive purple shadow, through which could be descried indistinctly the lines of the deserted palisades and ramparts, whence had marched out that mass of living valor, which now was arrayed in splendid order, just where the broad rays, sweeping down the hills, dwelt in their morning glory.

Motionless they stood in their solid formation, as living statues, one mass, as it appeared, of gold and scarlet; for all their casques and shields and corslets were of bright burnished bronze, and all the cassocks of the men, and cloaks of the officers of the vivid hue, named from the flower of the pomegranate; so that, to borrow a splendid image of Xenophon describing the array of the ten thousand, the whole army lightened with brass, and bloomed with crimson.

And now, from the camp in the rear a splendid train came sweeping at full speed, with waving crests of crimson horse-hair dancing above their gleaming helmets, and a broad banner fluttering in the air, under the well-known silver eagle, the tutelar bird of Marius, the God of the arch-traitor's sacrilegious worship.

Armed in bright steel, these were the body guard of Catiline, three hundred chosen veterans, the clients of his own and the Cornelian houses, men steeped to the lips in infamy and crime, soldiers of fifty victories, Sylla's atrocious colonists.

Mounted on splendid Thracian chargers, with Catiline at their head, enthroned like a conquering king on his superb black Erebus, they came sweeping at full gallop through the intervals of the foot, and, as they reached the front of the array, wheeled up at once into a long single line, facing their infantry, and at a single wafture of their leader's hand, halted all like a single man.

Then riding forward at a foot's pace into the interval between the horse and foot, Catiline passed along the whole line from end to end, surveying every man, and taking in with his rapid and instinctive glance, every minute detail in silence.

At the right wing, which Manlius commanded, he paused a moment or two, and spoke eagerly but shortly to his subordinate; but when he reached the extreme left he merely nodded his approbation to the Florentine, crying aloud in his deep tones the one word, "Remember!"

Then gallopping back at the top of his horse's speed to the eagle which stood in front of the centre, he checked black Erebus so suddenly that he reared bolt upright and stood for a second's space pawing the vacant air, uncertain if he could recover that rude impulse. But the rare horsemanship of Catiline prevailed, and horse and man stood statue-like and immoveable.

Then, pitching his voice so high and clear that every man of that dense host could hear and follow him, he burst abruptly into the spirited and stirring speech which has been preserved complete by the most elegant(15) of Roman writers.

"Soldiers, I hold it an established fact, that words cannot give valor—that a weak army cannot be made strong, nor a coward army brave, by any speech of their commander. How much audacity is given to each man's spirit, by nature, or by habit, so much will be displayed in battle. Whom neither glory nor peril can excite, you shall exhort in vain. Terror deafens the ears of his intellect. I have convoked you, therefore, not to exhort, but to admonish you in brief, and to inform you of the causes of my counsel. Soldiers, you all well know how terrible a disaster the cowardice and sloth of Lentulus brought on himself and us; and how, expecting reinforcements from the city, I was hindered from marching into Gaul. Now I would have you understand, all equally with me, in what condition we are placed. The armies of our enemy, two in number, one from the city, the other from the side of Gaul, are pressing hard upon us. In this place, were it our interest to do so, we can hold out no longer, the scarcity of corn and forage forbid that. Whithersoever we desire to go, our path must be opened by the sword. Wherefore I warn you that you be of a bold and ready spirit; and, when the battle have commenced, that ye remember this, that in your own right hand ye carry wealth, honor, glory, moreover liberty and your country. Victorious, all things are safe to us, supplies in abundance shall be ours, the colonies and free boroughs will open their gates to us. Failing, through cowardice, these self-same things will become hostile to us. Not any place nor any friend shall protect him, whom his own arms have not protected. However, soldiers, the same necessity doth not actuate us and our enemies. We fight for our country, our liberty, our life! To them it is supererogatory to do battle for the power of a few nobles. Wherefore, fall on with the greater boldness, mindful of your own valor. We might all of us, have passed our lives in utter infamy as exiles; a few of you, stripped of your property, might still have dwelt in Rome, coveting that of your neighbors. Because these things appeared too base and foul for men's endurance, you resolved upon this career. If you would quit it, you must perforce be bold. No one, except victorious, hath ever exchanged war for peace. Since to expect safety from flight, when you have turned away from the foe, that armor which defends the body, is indeed madness. Always in battle to who most fears, there is most peril. Valor stands as a wall to shield its possessor. Soldiers, when I consider you, and recall to mind your deeds, great hopes of victory possess me. Your spirit, age, and valor, give me confidence; moreover that necessity of conquest, which renders even cowards brave. As for the numbers of the enemy, the defiles will not permit them to surround you. And yet, should Fortune prove jealous of your valor, beware that ye lose not your lives unavenged; beware that, being captured, ye be not rather butchered like sheep, than slain fighting like men, and leaving to your foes a victory of blood and lamentation."

He ceased, and what a shout went up, seeming to shake the earth-fast hill, scaring the eagles from their high nests, and rolling in long echoes, like reverberated thunder among the resounding hills. Twice, thrice, that soul fraught acclamation pealed up to heaven, sure token of resolution unto death, in the hardened hearts of that desperate banditti.

Catiline drank delighted inspiration from the sound, and cried in triumphant tones:

"Enough! your shout is prophetic! Soldiers, already we have conquered!"

Then leaping from his charger to the ground, he turned to his body-guard, exclaiming,

"To fight, my friends, we have no need of horses; to fly we desire them not! On foot we must conquer, or on foot die! In all events, our peril as our hope must be equal. Dismount then, all of ye, and leading your chargers to the rear slay them; so shall we all run equal in this race of death or glory!"

And, with the word, leading his superb horse through the intervals between the cohorts of the foot, he drew his heavy sword, and smote him one tremendous blow which clove through spine and muscle, through artery and vein and gullet, severing the beauteous head from the graceful and swanlike neck, and hurling the noble animal to the earth a motionless and quivering mass.

It was most characteristic of the ruthless and brutal temper of that parricidal monster, that he cut down the noble animal which had so long and so gallantly borne him, which had saved his life more than once by its speed and courage, which followed him, fed from his hand, obeyed his voice, like a dog, almost like a child, without the slightest show of pity or compunction.

Many bad, cruel, savage-hearted men, ruthless to their own fellows, have proved themselves not devoid altogether of humanity by their love to some faithful animal, but it would seem that this most atrocious of mankind lacked even the "one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin."

He killed his favorite horse, the only friend, perhaps, that he possessed on earth, not only unreluctant, but with a sort of savage glee, and a sneering jest—

"If things go ill with us to day, I shall be fitly horsed on Erebus, by Hades!"

Then, hurrying to the van, he took post with his three hundred, and all the picked centurions and veterans of the reserve, mustered beneath the famous Cimbric Eagle, in the centre of the first rank, prepared to play out to the last his desperate and deadly game, the ablest chief, and the most daring soldier, that ever buckled blade for parricide and treason.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE BATTLE.

At least we'll die with harness on our back. MACBETH.

It was indeed time that the last arrangements of the traitor were completed; for, long since, from the gates of the Consular camp the great army of the enemy had been filing out, and falling into order, not a mile distant.

One third, at least, superior to the rebel host in numbers, the loyal soldiers were as high in spirit, as firm in resolution; were better armed, better officered, and, above all, strong in a better cause.

Nor if those had the incentive of despair to spur them to great deeds, did these lack a yet stronger stimulus to action. There were bright eyes, and fair forms in their camp, dependent on their victory for life, and, yet dearer, honor. So great was the terror spread through those regions by the name of Catiline, and by the outrages committed already by his barbarous banditti, that all the female nobility of the provinces, wherein the war was waging, had fled to the Roman camp, as to their only place of safety.

For all that district was ripe for insurrection; the borough towns awaited only the first sunshine of success, to join the rebellion; the rural slaves were, to a man, false at heart; and it was evident to all that the slightest check of the Consular forces would be the signal for tumult, massacre, and conflagration in the provincial towns, for all the horrors of a servile rising in the champaign.

Flight to Rome was impossible, since all the villainy and desperate crime of the land was afloat, and every where, beyond the outposts of Antonius' head quarters, the roads were infested with banditti, runaway slaves, and rustic robbers.

To the camp, therefore, had all the patricians of the district flocked, the men as volunteers, with such of their clients as they could trust, and such of their wealth as was portable; the women as suppliants, tearful and terrified, for Rome's powerful protection.

Meanwhile, for leagues around, by day the open country was seen blackened by numberless columns of smoke, by night flashing with numberless pyres of flame, the blaze of country seats and villas; and terror was on all sides, murder and rape, havoc and desolation.

The minds of the Roman soldiery were inflamed, therefore, to the utmost; the sight of the ravaged country, the charms, the tears, the terrors of the suppliant ladies, had kindled all that was patriotic, all that was generous, all that was manly in their nature; and it was with deep-recorded vows of vengeance that they had buckled on their armor, and grinded their thirsty swords for the conflict.

But throughout all that ardent host there was not one so determined, so calm in his resolved ire, so deadly bent on vengeance, as Paullus Arvina.

Julia was in the camp; for no means had occurred of sending her to Rome in safety, and her high counsels, her noble feminine courage, would have given birth alone to contagious valor in her lover's spirit, had he been weak and faltering as of old between his principles and his passions.

But it was not so. The stern trials to which his constancy had been subjected, the fearful strife of the hottest passions which had raged so long in his bosom, had hardened him like steel thrice tempered in the furnace, and he was now no longer the impulsive, enthusiastic, changeful stripling, in whom to-day's imagination swept away yesterday's resolve, but a cool, resolute, thoughtful man.

It is events, not years, which make men old or young. It is adversity and trial, not ease and prosperity, which make men, from dwarfs, giants.

And events had so crowded on the boy in the last few months, that those months had matured his wisdom more than all the years of his previous life. Adversity and trial had so swelled his mental stature, that aged men might have been proud to cope with him in counsel, strong men to rival him in execution.