"Well, you'll lose your dinner; that's all."

"Of course. We don't care."

"At any rate, don't go and forget about us. We want to leave, for
Rome after dinner, and you ought to be back in one hour, at the
very farthest."

"O, yes; the guide says it'll only take an hour. We don't intend
to spend any more time there than we can help."

"Well, I think you ought to come back," said Bob; "you know very
well how poor old Uncle Moses will fidget and worry about you."

"O, no; it's all right. Tell him that the guide is with us,
you know."

After a few more words, Frank and Bob, who were ravenously hungry,
hurried back to the hotel, and David and Clive, who were also, to
tell the truth, equally hungry, resisted their appetites as well
as they were able, and accompanied their guide to the Lake Albano.

Most boys are familiar with the story of the Alban Lake; but
for the benefit of those who may not have heard of it, or who,
having heard, have forgotten, it may be as well to give a
brief account of the famous tunnel, which was so very attractive
to Clive and David.

The city of Veii had been besieged for nine years, without success,
by the Romans; and at length, in the tenth year, a great prodigy
occurred, in the shape of the sudden rising of the waters of the
Alban Lake to an extraordinary height, without any apparent cause.
The Romans, in their bewilderment, sent a messenger to the oracle
of Delphi to inquire about it. Before this messenger returned, they
also captured a Verentine priest, who informed them that there were
certain oracular books in Veii, which declared that Veii could
never perish unless the waters of the Alban Lake should reach
the sea. Not long afterwards the messenger returned from Delphi,
who brought back an answer from the oracle at that place to the
same effect. Upon this, the Romans resolved to draw off the
waters of the lake so as to let them flow to the sea. Such an
undertaking was one of the most laborious kind, especially in an
age like that; but the Romans entered upon it, and worked at it
with that extraordinary tenacity of purpose which always
distinguished them. It was necessary to cut a tunnel through
the mountain, through rock of the hardest possible description.
But the same age had seen the excavation of other subterranean
passages far larger than this, and in the same country, preeminently
the Grotto of Posilipo, at Naples, and that of the Cumaean Sibyl,
and at length it was accom