“I would that I could stay with you, dear Clœlia,” said the boy. “I am not fitted for the life to which I go.”
“There is no choice for us; a son must obey his father; and it may be that in some time of need the mother of Caius may stand you in good stead, as once the son did, when he rescued you and your sister from the pursuing sea-robbers and brought you safe into port. If the time ever comes when you need Clœlia, she will not fail you.”
Clœlia embraced Casca affectionately as she spoke, and then she bestirred herself to prepare the evening meal, which they were to eat together for the last time.
Casca thought it wisest to keep the appointment with Ebba to himself. He intended to leave the house long before dawn, and to return to make final arrangements for his departure later in the day. The strange announcement in his father’s letter of the death of both Agatha and Ebba seemed a mystery he could not unravel. He knew nothing of Agatha, nor could he believe that it was Ebba who was with her in a cell at Radburn, and that both women should be found dead when the prison door was opened.
Certain it was, however, that he had seen Ebba at the Circus—he felt sure he could not be mistaken. She knew him, and addressed him as “Master,” and he wanted no further proof.
How she came to Rome, and why she was with the old Jew, he could not understand, and he was anxious for the meeting at the fountain of Egeria, below the Cælian Hill.
It was quite dark when Casca left Clœlia’s house the next morning, except, indeed, for the light of the stars, which had not yet begun to fade before the dawn.
When the boy reached the deserted and silent Forum, faint streaks of the coming day were just enough to show the outline of the columns which supported the façade of the temples, and the statues which surrounded the pillars.
There were a good many sleepers about the steps of the temple and plinths of the statues. The outside garment or toga was rolled up for a pillow, and the poor Roman citizens, who lived, for the most part, desultory lives out of doors, and earned a scanty pittance by helping to unlade the mules which came in from the country to supply fruit and milk and vegetables to the city, never desired easier or more luxurious couches! Then Casca threaded his way cautiously along till he took the narrow path which wound by the temple of Vesta to the Cælian Hill. In the hush before the dawn every sound was distinctly heard—the ripple of running waters—the low splash of fountains—the fall of solitary footsteps. Once there was the sound of a band of revellers, who were returning to one of the palaces in the Palatine, after a night of wild bacchanalian license. The noise grew nearer, passed below the place where Casca stood, and then grew fainter and fainter, and died away in the distance. Then there was a low sullen roar, which was often heard in the stillness of a Roman night—the lions roaring at daybreak for their prey, the food which would be supplied to them in the arena before sunset, when the Christians who might have been in captivity in some of the adjoining cells would be brought out to die!
Casca pursued his way, leaving the temple of Vesta behind him, pausing every now and then to look back at the place where his little sister was one day to minister, to keep the sacred fire burning, for the safety and welfare of the Roman people all over the world.