"How? what is this? what say you?" cried the chief slave of the farm, a person of some trust and importance, who had just come up.
"It was a tall slight fair-haired slave who bore the message—he called himself Jason—he rode a bay horse, did he not?" asked the new comer.
"He was! He did! A bay horse, with one white foot before, and a white star on his forehead. A rare beast from Numidia, or Cyrenaica," replied the steward, who was quite at home in the article of horse-flesh.
"He brought tidings that Arvina is sorely wounded?"
"He brought tidings! Therefore it was that they set forth at so short notice! He left the horse here, and was mounted on a black horse of the farm."
"Arvina is not wounded! That bay horse is Cethegus', the conspirator's! Arvina hath sent no message! They are betrayed, I tell you, man. Aulus Fulvius awaits them with a gang of desperadoes in the deep cleft of the hills, where the cross-road comes in by which you reach the Flaminian from the Labican way. Arm yourselves speedily and follow, else will they carry Julia to Catiline's camp in the Appenines, beside Fiesolé! What there will befall her, Catiline's character best may inform you! Come—to arms—men! to horse, and follow!"
But ignorant of the person of the messenger, lacking an authorized head, fearful of taking the responsibility, and incurring the reproach, perhaps the punishment, of credulity, they loitered and hesitated; and, though they did at length get to horse and set out in pursuit, it was not till Hortensia's cavalcade had been gone above an hour.
Meanwhile, unconscious of what had occurred behind them, and eager only to arrive at Rome as speedily as possible, the ladies journeyed onward, with full hearts, in silence, and in sorrow.
There is a deep dark gorge in the mountain chain, through which this road lay, nearly a mile in length; with a fierce torrent on one hand, and a sheer face of craggy rocks towering above it on the other. Beyond the torrent, the chesnut woods hung black and gloomy along the precipitous slopes, with their ragged tree-tops distinctly marked against the clear obscure of the nocturnal sky.
Midway this gorge, a narrow broken path comes down a cleft in the rocky wall on the right hand side, as you go toward Rome, by which through a wild and broken country the Flaminian way can be reached, and by it the district of Etruria and the famous Val d'Arno.