clouds.

It shone serene and bright, illumined from behind limitless depths by
the slanting rays of a slowly sinking sun. Taurus Antinor rose to his
feet; he looked and looked upon that light until it tore a wider and
ever wider gap in the angry clouds, and its golden radiance spread
right across the horizon far away.

The very mist now seemed aglow; the waters of the Tiber, tossed by the
gale, throw back brilliant sparks of reflected lights.

From the low-lying marshes among the reeds two birds rose in rapid
flight and disappeared in that golden haze.

"My God, not mine but Thy will be done!" murmured the lonely man; and
anguish folded its sable wings and the tortured heart was at peace.

CHAPTER XXXII

"For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son
whom He receiveth."--HEBREWS XII. 6.

The gorgeous palace of Augustus appeared quite deserted when the
praefect of Rome finally made his way to the vestibule. He crossed the
magnificent inner peristylium, the tall, uncut pillars of which, sharply
defined against the sky, enhanced its majestic grandeur and its air of
mysterious solemnity.

As a rule these vast halls were peopled with scribes, and though shorn
of its original imperial splendours the palace of the great Emperor
presented at times a certain air of animation and of official bustle.
But now these scribes, no doubt awed by the sound of terror and of
strife which must have reached even this hallowed spot, had fled into
the more remote portions of the palace, or mayhap had even joined the
throngs in the Forum, on the principle that 'tis better to form an unit
in an angry crowd, rather than to be its butt.

The peristylium itself, despite its mute and lonely magnificence, bore
traces of the turmoil that reigned throughout the city; there were
obvious signs that men had lived and worked here but a very little while
ago, that they had been afraid and then had run away.

The marble floors were stained with mud. The sedate chairs that usually
lined the walls were pushed aside and left to stand crooked and awry,
the very mockery of their former dignity. Here and there a roll of
parchment, an ink-stained pen, a cast-off cloak littered the hall and
looked curiously provocative and out of place--an insult to the majesty
of the dead and mighty Caesar, who had caused the stately columns to be
reared, and the massive walls to raise their pure lines upwards to the
sky.

But on all this Ta