But here where there were no palaces to guard, no insane ruler to protect, no one came to question the purpose of the benighted wanderers, nor did sudden outbursts of laughter or good cheer pierce the mud walls of the humble abodes that lay scattered on the slope of the hill.
The waning moon had hidden her light behind a heavy bank of clouds, a dull greyness pervaded the whole landscape, causing it to look weird and forlorn in the gloom. The few trees dotted about here and there looked starved and gaunt on the barren hill-side, with great skeleton-like arms that waved mournfully in the breeze; the ground uneven and parched—after the summer's drought—rose and sank in fantastic mounds and shapes like tiny fortresses of ghosts or ghouls; the street itself soon became merged in the general surroundings, only a tiny footway, scarcely discernible in the gathering darkness, wound upwards to the summit of the hill.
From time to time a solid block of what appeared only as impenetrable blackness loomed up from out the shadows, with all the grandeur of exaggerated size which the darkness of the night so generously lends. Soon it would reveal itself as a small mud-covered box, with four bare walls and a narrow doorway facing toward the south. Herein lived and suffered a family of human beings—freedmen and women without the stigma of slavery, but with all the misery of destitution and often of complete starvation.
Here and there the little house would be surrounded by a vestibule—a mere projection from the roof supported on a few rough beams—but never a garden, scarcely a tree to cast a cooling shade on hot summer afternoons, or clump of lilies or mimosa to sweeten the air that came dank and fetid from over the marshes beyond the hill.
Not a sound now disturbed the stillness of the night save when a bat fluttered overhead, or when furtive footsteps—on unavowable errand bent—glided softly off the beaten track and quickly died away among the shadows.
The praefect walked on, heedless of his surroundings. The mood that had been on him ever since he left Caius Nepos' house still caused his mind to wander restlessly in the illimitable regions of perplexity and doubt. He scarcely looked where he was going, for he kept his eyes fixed upon the starlit canopy above him and upon the crest of the hill which lost itself in the darkness overhead.
Suddenly, out of the gloom, two pairs of hands emerged, and without warning fastened themselves on the praefect's throat: thin, claw-like hands they were, and above them gaunt arms, mere bones covered with wrinkled flesh that proclaimed starvation and misery.
The old slave from the rear uttered a cry of terror; Nola clung to him paralysed with fear. The slopes of the Aventine were noted for the gangs of malefactors that infested them, and defying the power of the aediles, rendered them unsafe for wayfarers even in the light of day.
Taurus Antinor, instantly brought back from the land of dreams, had no great difficulty in freeing himself from the claw-like grasp. With a quick gesture of his own powerful hands, he had in a moment succeeded in dragging the gaunt fingers from off his throat, and, holding the thin wrists with a firm grip, he gave them a sudden sharp twist, which elicited two cries of pain and brought two pairs of knees in hard contact with the ground.
It had all occurred in the space of a few seconds, and now a bundle of soiled rags seemed to be lying huddled up under the praefect's foot, and he looked like some powerful desert beast that has placed a massive paw on a pair of puny rats.