s, at the slightest noise or sound
from the cowering slaves, he struck out savagely with the whip, and the
thongs with their sharp hooks would descend whizzing on some naked
shoulder and tear out a piece of flesh and start the flow of a fresh
stream of blood.

Then the madman would break out into a diabolical fit of laughter, and
strike out with his whip again and again all around him, wildly and
indiscriminately, until his garments and his face were spattered all
over with blood, and to right and left of him shrieking figures fell
fainting to the ground.

The Caesar was crazy with rage, and he who had thus angered him reclined
on a couch, out of the reach of the shrieking demon, and his thin lips
were curled in a smile of satisfaction. It was Caius Nepos who was here
that he might betray those of his accomplices who had swerved from their
allegiance to himself, and behind him--well hidden by the draperies of
the couch--cowered Hun Rhavas, the dusky slave of the treasury, he who
yesterday had appeared before the tribunal of the praefect of Rome for
conspiracy to defraud the State in connection with the sale of the
slave-girl Nola.

The law in such matters was severe. It demanded that a delinquent
against the State--if he be a slave--shall lose his right hand, or his
tongue, or his ears; that he should moreover forfeit his entire
hard-saved belongings to the treasury and lose all chance of ever
obtaining his freedom. But the praefect had been lenient, and though he
could not dismiss the offender, he mitigated his punishment.

Hun Rhavas was publicly scourged and branded, but he lost neither ears,
tongue, nor hand, nor was he deprived of the peculium with which
ultimately he hoped to purchase his own freedom and that of his
children. Yet such was the African's nature, such the result of the
training which slavery in the imperial entourage had drilled into him,
that Hun Rhavas forgot the clemency and only remembered the punishment.

With bleeding back and mind saturated with hate, he sought audience of
the Emperor, and obtained it half an hour after Caius Nepos, the
praetorian praefect, had himself been introduced in the presence of
Caligula. The story which Hun Rhavas--the paid spy--brought to the ear
of Caesar, was but a confirmation of what Caius Nepos had to tell.

A conspiracy was on foot to murder the father of the armies, the
greatest and best of Caesars. The flower of the Roman patriciate was
wallowing in th