"Ha!" he exclaimed, "I am right, Thrasea. Foul murder hath been done here! Let us look farther."
Several minutes now were spent in searching every foot of ground, and prying even into the open vaults of several broken graves; for at first they had taken a wrong direction in the gloom. Quickly, however, seeing that he was in error, Arvina turned upon his traces, and was almost immediately successful; for there, scarce twenty feet from the spot where he had found the dagger, with his grim gory face turned upward as if reproachfully to the dark quiet skies, the black death-sweat still beaded on his frowning brow, and a sardonic grin distorting his pale lips, lay the dead slave. Flat on his back, with his arms stretched out right and left, his legs extended close together to their full length, he lay even as he had fallen; for not a struggle had convulsed his limbs after he struck the earth; life having actually fled while he yet stood erect, battling with all the energies of soul and body against man's latest enemy. The bosom of his gray tunic, rent asunder, displayed the deep gash which had let out the spirit, whence the last drops of the thick crimson life-blood were ebbing with a slow half-stagnant motion.
On this dread sight Paul was still gazing in that motionless and painful silence, with which the boldest cannot fail to look upon the body of a fellow creature from which the immortal soul has been reluctantly and forcefully ex[pg 49]pelled, when a loud cry from Thrasea, who, having lagged a step or two behind, was later in discovering the corpse, aroused him from his melancholy stupor.
"Alas! alas! ah me!" cried the half-sobbing freedman, "my friend, my more than friend, my countryman, my kinsman, Medon!"
"Ha! dost thou recognize the features? didst thou know him who lies so coldly and inanimately here before us?" cried the excited youth, "whose slave was he? speak, Thrasea, on thy life! this shall be looked to straightway; and, by the Gods! avenged."
"As I would recognize mine own in the polished brass, as I do know my father's sister's son! for such was he, who lies thus foully slaughtered. Alas! alas! my countryman! wo! wo! for thee, my Medon! Many a day, alas! many a happy day have we two chased the elk and urus by the dark-wooded Danube; the same roof covered us; the same board fed; the same fire warmed us; nay! the same fatal battle-field robbed both of liberty and country. Yet were the great Gods merciful to the poor captives. Thy father did buy me, Arvina, and a few years of light and pleasant servitude restored the slave to freedom. Medon was purchased by the wise consul, Cicero, and was to have received his freedom at the next Saturnalia. Alas! and wo is me, he is now free forever from any toils on earth, from any mortal master."
"Nay! weep not so, my Thrasea," exclaimed the generous youth, laying his left hand with a friendly pressure on the freedman's shoulder, "thou shalt have all means to do all honor to his name; all that can now be done by mortals for the revered and sacred dead. Aid me now to remove the body, lest those who slew him may return, and carry off the evidences of their crime."
Thus speaking, he thrust the unlighted end of the torch into the ground, and lifting up the shoulders of the carcase, while Thrasea raised the feet, bore it away a hundred yards or better, and laying it within the open arch-way of an old tomb, covered the mouth with several boughs torn from a neighboring cypress.
Then satisfied that it would thus escape a nearer search than it was likely would be made by the murderers, when [pg 50]they should find that it had been removed, he walked away very rapidly toward his home.
Before he left the burial ground, however, he wiped the dagger carefully in the long grass, and hid it in the bosom of his tunic.