CHAPTER XXX.

TORRES VEDRAS.

There were those, however, whom Callista could understand, and who could
understand her; there were those who, while Aristo, Cornelius, Jucundus,
and Polemo were moving in her behalf, were interesting themselves also in
her, and in a more effectual way. Agellius had joined Caecilius, and, if in
no other way, by his mouth came to the latter and his companions the news
of her imprisonment. On the morning that Agellius had been so strangely
let out of confinement by his brother, and found himself seated at the
street-door, with his tunic on his arm and his boots on the ground before
him, his first business was to recollect where he was, and to dispose of
those articles of dress according to their respective uses. What should he
do with himself, was of course his second thought. He could not stay there
long without encountering the early risers of Sicca, the gates being
already open. To attempt to find out where Callista was, and then to see
her or rescue her, would have ended at once in his own capture. To go to
his own farm would have been nearly as dangerous, and would have had less
meaning. Caecilius too had said, that they were not long to be separated,
and had given him directions for finding him.

Immediately then he made his way to one of the eastern gates, which led to
Thibursicumbur. There was indeed no time to be lost, as he soon had
indications; he met several men who knew him by sight, and one of the
apparitors of the Duumviri, who happily did not. An apostate Christian,
whose zeal for the government was notorious, passed him and looked back
after him. However, he would soon be out of pursuit, if he had the start
of them until the sun got round the mountains he was seeking. He walked on
through a series of rocky and barren hills, till he got some way past the
second milestone. Before he had reached the third he had entered a defile
in the mountains. Perpendicular rocks rose on each side of him, and the
level road, reaching from rock to rock, was not above thirty feet across.
He felt that if he was pursued here, there was no escape. The third
milestone passed, he came to the country road; he pursued it, counting out
his thousand steps, as Caecilius had instructed him. By this time it had
left the stony bottom, and was rising up the side of the precipice.
Brushwood and dwarf pines covered it, mingled with a few olives and
caroubas. He said out h