fugitive at every bound; till, had he stretched his arm out, he might have
seized him; till his breath, hot and strong, waved the disordered
elf-locks that fell down upon the bare neck of his flying victim. And now
the low wall of the Plebeian burying ground arose before them, shaded by
mighty cypresses and overgrown with tangled ivy. At one wild bound the
hunted slave leaped over it, into the trackless gloom. At one wild bound
the fierce pursuer followed him. Scarcely a yard asunder they alighted on
the rank grass of that charnel grove; and not three paces did they take
more, ere Cataline had hurled his victim to the earth, and cast himself
upon him; choking his cries for help by the compression of his sinewy
fingers, which grasped with a tenacity little inferior to that of an iron
vice the miserable wretch's gullet.

He snatched his poniard from his sheath, reared it on high with a well
skilled and steady hand! Down it came, noiseless and unseen. For there was
not a ray of light to flash along its polished blade. Down it came with
almost the speed and force of the electric fluid. A deep, dull, heavy
sound was heard, as it was plunged into the yielding flesh, and the hot
gushing blood spirted forth in a quick jet into the very face and mouth of
the fell murderer. A terrible convulsion, a fierce writhing spasm
followed--so strong, so muscularly powerful, that the stern gripe of
Cataline was shaken from the throat of his victim, and from his dagger's
hilt!

In the last agony the murdered man cast off his slayer from his breast;
started erect upon his feet! tore out, from the deep wound, the fatal
weapon which had made it; hurled it far--far as his remaining strength
permitted--into the rayless night; burst forth into a wild and yelling cry,
half laughter and half imprecation; fell headlong to the earth--which was
no more insensible than he, what time he struck it, to any sense of mortal
pain or sorrow--and perished there alone, unpitied and unaided.

"HABET!--he hath it!" muttered Cataline, quoting the well-known expression
of the gladiatorial strife; "he hath it!--but all the plagues of Erebus,
light on it--my good stiletto lies near to him in the swart darkness, to
testify against me; nor by great Hecate! is there one chance to ten of
finding it. Well! be it so!" he added, turning upon his heel, "be it so,
for most like it hath fallen in the deep long grass, where none will ever
find it; and if they do, I care not!"