thers through the well-known
vestibule and the colonnade of the atrium to the study of Cethegus.

When Cethegus heard the hastily-approaching footsteps, he rose from the
lectus upon which he was lying writing, and put his letters into a
casket with a silver lid.

"Ah, the saviours of the fatherland!" he said, smiling, and advanced
towards the door.

"Vile traitor!" shouted Licinius, his hand on his sword--anger impeded
further speech; he half drew his sword from the sheath.

"Stop! first let him defend himself, if he can," panted Scaevola,
holding the young man's arm, as he hastened into the room.

"It is impossible that he can have deserted the cause of the Holy
Church," said Silverius, as he also entered.

"Impossible!" laughed Licinius. "What! are you mad, or am I? Has he not
caused us to be confined in our houses? Has he not shut the gates, and
taken the oaths of the mob for the barbarians?"

"Has he not," continued Cethegus, "caught the noble fathers of the
city, three hundred in number, and kept them in the Curia, like so many
mice in a trap; three hundred aristocratic mice?"

"He dares to mock us? Will you suffer that?" cried Licinius. And
Scaevola turned pale with anger.

"Well, and what would you have done had you been allowed to act?" asked
the Prefect quietly, crossing his arms on his broad breast.

"What should we have done?" cried Licinius. "What we, and you with us,
have a hundred times decided upon. As soon as the news of the tyrant's
death had arrived, we should have killed all the Goths in the city,
proclaimed a Republic, and chosen two consuls----"

"Of the names of Licinius and Scaevola; that is the first thing. Well,
and then? What then?"

"What then? Freedom would have conquered!"

"Folly would have conquered!" broke out Cethegus in a thundering voice,
which startled his accusers. "Well for us that your hands were bound;
you would have strangled Hope for ever. Look here, and thank me upon
your knees!"

He took some records from another casket, and gave them to his
astonished companions.

"There; read! The enemy had been warned, and had thrown the noose round
the neck of Rome in a masterly manner. If I had not acted as I did,
Earl Witichis would be standing at this moment before the Salarian Gate
in the north with ten thousand Goths; to-morrow young Totila would have
blockaded the mouth of the Tiber on the south with the fleet from
Neapolis; and Duke Thulun would have been approach