The darkness settled down over Rome and still Virgilia dreamed on, but the dreams were not prophetic; in the visions which she had there were no forebodings of that which was to come.
IV.
THE INNER SHRINE OF JUPITER.
Alyrus crept out of the rear door of the house about sundown, while Virgilia, her head pillowed on a cushion of soft down, was dreaming of things past. He told Alexis to guard the entrance and if the master inquired for him to tell him that a pair of sandals needed repairing and he was carrying them to the shoemaker. In fact, he had the sandals, of yellow Persian leather, wrapped up in an old handkerchief, and showed them to the Greek.
While Alexis seated himself on the porter's marble bench just inside the front door, left open that the evening breeze blowing fresh and cool from the sea might pass through the heated rooms, Alyrus went into the narrow alley at the rear. Just outside, a man crouched against the brick wall. It was Lucius, the water-carrier, who had sung the Christian hymn so boldly on the streets where pagan gods were worshipped. His goat-skin water-bag was empty and lay, wrinkled and collapsed, beside him.
Lucius, himself, was a strange sight in the midst of the luxurious people of Rome. A peasant he was, dwelling in a cave far out on the Roman Campagna, remote from the splendid villas and gardens lining the wide ways leading out of the city to North and South and West. This cave was in a mass of tufa rock rising abruptly from the flat, green fields, and not far from the aqueduct, three tiers of brick arches, one above the other, joined by massive masonry, through which fresh water was brought in big leaden pipes to the city.
Hundreds of long-horned cattle, white and clean and strong, were grazing in the fields. It was such as these that Cincinnatus guided, ploughing the fields, when the messenger rode swiftly from Rome to call him to come and save her by becoming Dictator.
Lucius was a tiller of the fields, but, also, a water-carrier. He was resting now, after his labors in the scorching sunshine, half-asleep.
The Moor roused him into wide wakefulness, by giving him a sturdy kick.
"What art thou doing here, lazybones? Get thou to thy kennel, wherever it may be, dog of a Christian, and do not dare to show thy face here again."