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But at the moment Ulpius stopped in his slow progress, reeled, threw out his hands convulsively, and seizing Numerian by the arm, staggered back with him against the side-wall of the temple. The fingers of the tortured wretch closed as if they were never to be unlocked again closed as if with the clutch of death, with the last frantic grasp of a drowning man.
But no person, unacquainted with the letter, can determine from this inscription, or any other part of the map, the date either of the discovery or map; and this precise difficulty Euphrosynus Ulpius apparently encountered in attempting to fix the time of the discovery for his globe, as will hereafter be seen.
I called her harlot I called her harlot! In a paroxysm of despair, he started up and looked distractedly around him. Ulpius still stood motionless at the window. At the sight of the ruthless Pagan he trembled in every limb. All those infirmities of age that had been hitherto spared him, seemed to overwhelm him in an instant. He feebly advanced to his betrayer's side, and addressed him thus:
All that she had suffered since Ulpius had dragged her from the farm-house in the suburbs the night pilgrimage over the plain the fearful passage through the wall revived in her memory, mingled with vague ideas, now for the first time aroused, of the plague and famine that were desolating the city; and, with sudden apprehensions that Goisvintha might still be following her, knife in hand, through the lonely streets; while passively prominent over all these varying sources of anguish and dread, the scene of the young chieftain's death lay like a cold weight on her heavy heart.
Fear and astonishment mingled in her expression with grief and despair as she sunk at his feet, moaning in tones of piercing entreaty 'O Ulpius! if Ulpius you are have pity on me and take me to my father! My father! my father! In all the lonely world there is nothing left to me but my father!
Many and various were the receptacles constructed for the private immolation of human victims in different parts of the empire in its crowded cities as well as in its solitary woods and among all, one of the most remarkable and the longest preserved was the great cavity pierced in the wall of the temple which Ulpius had chosen for his solitary lurking-place in Rome.
Ere long the laughter of Ulpius, while he moved slowly hither and thither in the darkness of the temple, was overpowered by the sound of her voice deep, groaning, but yet steady as she uttered her last words words poured forth like the wild dirges, the fierce death-songs of the old Goths when they died deserted on the bloody battle-field, or were cast bound into deep dungeons, a prey to the viper and the asp.
Raising his eyes from the little spring, Ulpius next directed his attention to the prospect above him.
Through this atmosphere of darkness and death, along these paths of pestilence and famine; unregarding and unregarded, the Pagan and his prisoner passed slowly onward towards the quarter of the city opposite the Pincian Mount. No ray of thought, even yet, brightened the dull faculties of Ulpius; still he walked forward vacantly, and still he was followed wearily by the fast-failing girl.
Her father was still praying; he heard nothing, for his heart was bleeding in atonement at the shrine of his boyish home, and his soul still communed with its Maker. The voice that followed hers was the voice of Ulpius. 'Oh, beautiful are the gardens round the sacred altars, and lofty the trees that embower the glittering shrines! he exclaimed, rapt and ecstatic in his new visions.
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