THE DOOM OF THE TRAITOR
But what, meantime, had become of the pursuers? Baffled in their effort to seize their prey, and fearful of losing their way in this tangled labyrinth they had sullenly retreated, tracing their steps by the chalk-marks they had made upon the walls. At last, they returned to the stairway by which they had entered and so found their way above ground.
"This is no work for soldiers," muttered the disgusted officer, "hunting these rats through their underground runs. They are a skulking set of vermin."
"What has become of that coward Greek?" asked the second in command. "He didn't seem to half like the job."
"Is he not here? Then he must have made his escape," said the Centurion. "But if he is caught in that rat-trap, there let him stay. I'll not risk a Roman soldier's life to save a craven Greek," and he gave the command to march back to the city.
Meanwhile, how fares it with the unhappy Isidorus?
When the soldiers caught sight of the Christians and began their pursuit, he had no heart to join in it, and lingered in the vaulted chamber where the funeral rites had been interrupted. The first thing that caught his eye was the epitaph of the noble Adauctus. With quavering voice he read the lines we have already given: "With unfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having confessed Christ, thou dids't seek the celestial realms."
"And this was he," he soliloquised, "who gave up name, and fame, and fortune, high office, and the favour of the Emperor, and embraced shame, and persecution, and a cruel death for conscience sake. How grand he was that day when I warned him of the machinations of his foes—so undaunted and calm. But grander he is as he lies in the majesty of death behind that slab. I felt myself a coward in his living presence then, but in the presence of this dead map, I feel a greater coward still. His memory haunts, it tortures me, I must away!" and turning from, the chamber, he wandered by the dim light of his taper down the grave-lined corridor, pausing at times to read their humble inscriptions:—
Rudely written, but each letter
Full of hope, and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the here and the hereafter.
And their calmness and peacefulness seemed to reproach his conscience-smitten and unrestful soul.