from the rain-sodden ground. The worst of the storm had passed from
over the city, but the thunder still rolled dully at intervals above the
Campania and great gusts of wind drove the heavy rain into Taurus
Antinor's face.

It seemed to him, as he walked rapidly down the narrow street in front
of the Augusta's palace, that the noise from the Forum below had gained
in volume and in strength. When the raging tempest of rebellion was at
its height earlier in the day, he had lain in a drugged sleep,
unconscious of the shouts, the threats, the groans which had resounded
from palace to palace on the very summit of the Palatine. When he awoke
these terrifying sounds were already more subdued. The people had been
driven by the storm-fanned conflagration which they themselves had
kindled, to seek shelter under the arcades of the tabernae in the Forum
below. But now, after a couple of hours of enforced inactivity, they
were ready once more for mischief: in compact groups of a dozen or so
they were slowly emerging from beneath the shelters, and it only needed
the amalgamation of these isolated groups for the fire of open
insurrection to be ablaze again.

Time, therefore, was obviously precious. At any moment now, if the rain
ceased altogether, the populace--in no way cooled by the
drenching--would once more storm the hill and would discover the
fugitive Caesar in his retreat. Already from afar there came to the
lonely pedestrian's ear the roar of a mighty wave composed of many
sounds, which, gathering force and fury, was ready to dash itself anew
upon the imperial hill.

But up here on the summit there still reigned comparative quietude.
True that as he walked rapidly along Taurus Antinor spied from time to
time groups of excited, chattering men congregated at street corners or
under the shelter of a jutting portico; whilst now and then from behind
the huge piles of builders' materials, which littered this portion of
the Palatine, darkly swathed figures would emerge at sound of the
praefect's footsteps on the flagstones, and as quickly vanish again. But
to these Taurus Antinor paid no heed; they were but the remote echoes of
the angry storm below.

Soon the majestic pile of Augustus' palace loomed before him on the
left, with its unending vistas of marble and porphyry colonnades. On the
right was the temple of Jupiter Victor on the very summit of the hill.

An undefinable instinct led the man's footsteps to that lonely heigh