And as he spoke, unsheathing his broad poignard, but holding it concealed
beneath his cassock, he strode on boldly, affecting the most perfect
indifference, and even insolence of bearing.

Meanwhile the half-seen figure had entirely disappeared amid the gloom;
yet had the wary eye of the conspirator, in the one momentary glance he
had obtained, been able to detect with something very near to certainty
the spot wherein the spy, if such he were, lay hidden. As he approached
the place--whereat a heap of rubbish, the relics of a building not long ago
as it would seem consumed by fire, projected far into the street--seeing no
sign whatever of the man who, he was well assured, was not far distant, he
paused a little so as to suffer his companions to draw near. Then as they
came up with him, skilled in all deep and desperate wiles, he instantly
commenced a whispered conversation, a tissue of mere nonsense, with here
and there a word of seeming import clearly and audibly pronounced. Nor was
his dark manoeuvre unsuccessful; for as he uttered the word "Cicero,"
watching meanwhile the heap of ruins as jealously as ever tiger glared on
its destined prey, he caught a tremulous outline; and in a second's space,
a small round object, like a man's head, was protruded from the darkness,
and brought into relief against the brighter back ground.

Then--then--with all the fury--all the lythe agile vigor, all the unrivalled
speed, and concentrated fierceness of that tremendous beast of prey, he
dashed upon his victim! But at the first slight movement of his sinewy
form, the dimly seen shape vanished; impetuously he rushed on among the
piles of scattered brick and rubbish, and, ere he saw the nature of the
place, plunged down a deep descent into the cellar of the ruin.

Lucky was it for Cataline, and most unfortunate for Rome, that when the
building fell, its fragments had choked three parts of the depth of that
subterranean vault; so that it was but from a height of three or four feet
at the utmost, that the fierce desperado was precipitated!

Still, to a man less active, the accident might have been serious, but
with instinctive promptitude, backed by a wonderful exertion of muscular
agility, he writhed his body even in the act of falling so that he lighted
on his feet; and, ere a second had elapsed after his fall, was extricating
himself from the broken masses of cement and brickwork, and soon stood
unharmed, though somewhat stunned an