The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) - The UK Mirror Service

THE MEN 11
bounding pace he hurried onward."
"Tush!" answered Cataline, "tush! was that all? the knave was
a chance night-walker, and frightened ye! Ha! ha! by Hercules!
it makes me laugh—frightened the rash and overbold Cethegus!"
"It was not all!" replied Cethegus very calmly, "it was not all,
Cataline. And, but that we are joined here in a purpose so mighty
that it overwhelms all private interests, all mere considerations
of the individual, you, my good sir, should learn what it is to
taunt a man with fear, who fears not anything—least of all thee!
But it was not all. For as we turned from a side lane into the [18]
Wicked 1 street that scales the summit of the Esquiline, my eye
caught something lurking in the dark shadow cast over an angle
of the wall by a large cypress. I seized the arm of Cassius, to
check his speech"—
"Ha! did the fat idiot speak?—what said he?" interrupted
Cataline.
"Nothing," replied the other, "nothing, at least, of any moment.
Well, I caught Cassius by the arm, and was in the act of pointing,
when from the shadows of the tree out sprang this self-same
varlet, whereon I——".
"Rushed on him! dragged him into the light! and smote him,
thus, and thus, and thus! didst thou not, excellent Cethegus?"
Cataline exclaimed fiercely in a hard stern whisper, making three
lounges, while he spoke, as if with a stiletto.
"I did not any of these things," answered the other.
"And why not, I say, why not? why not?" cried Cataline with
rude impetuosity.
"That shall I answer, when you give me time," said Cethegus,
coolly. "Because when I rushed forth, he fled with an exceeding
rapid flight; leaped the low wall into the graveyard of the
base Plebeians, and there among the cypresses and overthrown
sepulchres escaped me for a while. I beat about most warily, and
1 Vicus sceleratus. So called because Tullia therein drove her chariot over
her father's corpse.