aid, making himself heard despite the clamour, "do you
believe the charge of that man?"

"No villain ever would avenge himself more basely."

"Then at all costs we must save the lady."

It was time. A fat butcher, flourishing a heavy cleaver, had leaped
forward; Fabia saw him with glassy, frightened eyes, but neither
shrieked nor drew back. But Demetrius smote the man with his long
sword through the body, and the brute dropped the cleaver as he fell.

"Now," and Demetrius seized the Vestal around the waist, as lightly as
a girl would raise a kitten, and flung her across his shoulders. One
stride and he was in the passage leading to the peristylium; and
before the mob could follow Agias had dashed the door in their faces,
and shot the bolt.

"It will hold them back a moment," muttered Demetrius, "but we must
hasten."

They ran across the peristylium, the pirate chief with his burden no
less swift than Agias. The door to the rear street was flung open, and
they were out in a narrow alleyway. Just as they did so, a howl of
many voices proclaimed that the peristylium door had yielded.

"Guide me by the straightest way," commanded the sea rover.

"Where?" was Agias's question.

"To the wharves. The yacht is the only safe place for the lady. There
I will teach her how I can honour a friend of Sextus Drusus."

Agias felt that it was no time for expostulation. A Vestal Virgin take
refuge on a pirate ship! But it was a matter of life and death now,
and there was no time for forming another plan. Once let the mob
overtake them, and the lives of all three were not worth a sesterce.
Agias found it necessary to keep himself collected while he ran, or he
would lose the way in the maze of streets. The yacht was moored far
below the Pons Sublicius, and the whole way was full of peril. It was
no use to turn off into alleys and by-paths; to do so at night meant
to be involved in a labyrinth as deadly for them as that of the Cretan
Minos. The mob was on their heels, howling, raging. The people were
beginning to wake in their houses along the streets. Men bawled "Stop
thief!" from the windows, imagining there had been a robbery. Once two
or three figures actually swung out into the way before them, but at a
stray glint of lantern light falling on Demetrius's naked long sword,
they vanished in the gloom. But still the mob pressed on, ever gaining
accessions, ever howling the more fiercely. Agias realized that the
weight of his b