out him, 'and the
jewels.'

Not till the gates of Cumae were behind them, and they had entered the
cavern in the hill, did Basil venture to recount what had happened. He
alighted from his horse, and walking through the gloom beside the
carriage he briefly narrated all in a whisper to Aurelia--all except
his own ingenious device for balking the Hun's cupidity. What means
Marcian had employed for their release he could but vaguely conjecture;
that would be learned a few days hence when his friend came again to
Surrentum. Aurelia's companion in the carriage, still hooded and
cloaked, neither moved nor uttered a word.

At a distance of some twenty yards from the end of the tunnel, Felix,
riding in advance, checked his horse and shouted. There on the ground
lay a dead man, a countryman, who it was easy to see had been stabbed
to death, and perhaps not more than an hour ago. Quarrel or robbery,
who could say? An incident not so uncommon as greatly to perturb the
travellers; they passed on and came to Puteoli. Here the waiting
boatmen were soon found; the party embarked; the vessel oared away in a
dead calm.

The long voyage was tedious to Basil only because Veranilda remained
unseen in the cabin; the thought of bearing her off; as though she were
already his own, was an exultation, a rapture. When he reflected on the
indignities he had suffered in the citadel rage burned his throat, and
Aurelia, all bitterness at the loss of her treasure, found words to
increase this wrath. A Hun! A Scythian savage! A descendant perchance
of the fearful Attila! He to represent the Roman Empire! Fit
instrument, forsooth, of such an Emperor as Justinian, whose boundless
avarice, whose shameful subjection to the base-born Theodora, were
known to every one. To this had Rome fallen; and not one of her sons
who dared to rise against so foul a servitude!

'Have patience, cousin,' Basil whispered, bidding her with a glance
beware of the nearest boatman. 'There are some who will not grieve if
Totila--'

'No more than that? To stand, and look on, and play the courtier to
whichever may triumph!'

Basil muttered with himself. He wished he had been bred a soldier
instead of growing to manhood in an age when the nobles of Rome were
held to inglorious peace, their sole career that of the jurist And
Aurelia, brooding, saw him involved beyond recall in her schemes of
vengeance.

The purple evening fell about them, an afterglow of sunset trembling
u