o words, 'Serapis',
'Macrinus'; and about its base lay some pieces of torn, soiled linen,
which still retained enough of their former character, both in shape,
size, and colour, to convince Vetranio that they had once served as the
vestments of a Pagan priest. Further than this the senator's
observation did not carry him, for the close, almost mephitic
atmosphere of the place already began to affect him unfavourably. He
felt a suffocating sensation in his throat and a dizziness in his head.
The restorative influence of his recent bath declined rapidly. The
fumes of the wine he had drunk in the night, far from having been, as
he imagined, permanently dispersed, again mounted to his head. He was
obliged to lean against the stone table to preserved his equilibrium as
he faintly desired the Pagan to shorten their sojourn in his miserable
retreat.

Without even noticing the request, Ulpius hurriedly proceeded to erase
the drawings on the buttresses and the inscriptions on the table. Then
collecting the fragments of statues and the pieces of linen, he
deposited them in a hiding-place in the corner of the apartment. This
done, he returned to the stone against which Vetranio supported
himself, and for a few minutes silently regarded the senator with a
firm, earnest, and penetrating gaze.

A dark suspicion that he had betrayed himself into the hands of a
villain, who was then plotting some atrocious project connected with
his safety or honour, began to rise on the senator's bewildered brain
as he unwillingly submitted to the penetrating examination of the
Pagan's glance. At that moment, however, the withered lips of the old
man slowly parted, and he began to speak. Whether as he looked on
Vetranio's disturbed countenance, and marked his unsteady gait, the
heart of Ulpius, for the first time since his introduction to the
senator, misgave him when he thought of their monstrous engagement; or
whether the near approach of the moment that was henceforth, as he
wildly imagined, to fix Vetranio as his assistant and ally, so
powerfully affected his mind that it instinctively sought to vent its
agitation through the natural medium of words, it is useless to
inquire. Whatever his motives for speech, the impressive earnestness
of his manner gave evidence of the depth and intensity of his emotions
as he addressed the senator thus:--

'I have submitted to servitude in a Christian's house, I have suffered
the contamination of a C