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

THE MEN 17
steady pace, gaining not any thing, nor seeming to desire to gain
any thing, while yet within the precincts of the populous and
thickly-settled city.
But now they crossed the broad Virbian street. The slave,
distinctly visible for such, as he glanced by a brightly decorated
shrine girt by so many brilliant lamps as shewed its tenant idol
to have no lack of worshippers, darted up a small street leading
directly towards the Esquiline.
"Now! now!" lisped Cataline between his hard-set teeth, "now
he is mine, past rescue!"
Up the dark filthy avenue they sped, the fierce pursuer now
gaining on the 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 [24]
followed—so strong, so muscularly powerful, that the stern gripe