take me back ... I dare not go!"

Taurus Antinor, none too patient a man at any time, had to clench his
fists and drive his finger-nails into the palms of his hands, else he
could have struck this abject, miserable coward. He wrenched his cloak
out of the Caesar's grasp and with a firm grip pulled him roughly up
from the ground.

"An thou canst not control thy cowardly fears," he said harshly, "I'll
leave thee to perish at their hands."

And holding the wretched man tightly by the wrist, he quickly sought
shelter behind a pile of building material which lay some distance away.
He hoped that this cringing dastard would not hear that other clamour of
the people which invariably followed the call for vengeance: "Hail
Taurus Antinor! Hail!"

Did these words perchance reach Caligula's ears he would no doubt even
at this eleventh hour have refused to trust himself to the praefect; he
would rush back into the palace, like a tracked beast that seeks its
burrow, and all the sorrow and the renunciation of the past twenty-four
hours would turn to the bitter fruit of uselessness.

Fortunately Caligula's senses were dulled by his own terrors. He heard
the shouts and the ceaseless din of rebellious strife but the only word
that he could distinguish was the ominous one of "Death," and whenever
this word struck upon his confused mind a violent fit of trembling would
seize him and he would stumble and stagger along like a drunken man.

Taurus Antinor, however, held him tightly by the wrist and thus he half
led, half dragged him in his wake. The towering masses of building
materials, huge blocks of stone and of marble, scaffoldings and ladders
piled up on the open ground which encircled the rear of Caligula's
palace, afforded him the protection which he had counted on and
foreseen.

Keeping well within the shadows, he thus gradually worked his way on
from pile to pile until he reached the brow of the hill. The crowd which
was swarming up the slopes was just beginning to appear in isolated
detachments in the roads and streets that led upwards from the Forum.
Apparently the mob had not forgotten its former purpose to entrap the
fugitive Caesar and to force him to come out and to face his people.

The dull evening light creeping up from below, the thin drizzle which
had succeeded the heavy rain and which mingled with the rising vapours
from the sodden ground, the aimlessness of the onrushing crowd as it
spread itself in confused