Next morning he was sent off towards Rome. He thought of trying to communicate with Acte, who had been deeply grieved by losing sight of him. But this was impossible. There was no one to take any message for him. He was told that not only Callicles--on whom fell in part the disgrace of his escape--but Nero himself was bitterly incensed against him, first, for his unpardonable indiscretion, then for his flight, and lastly--though this was a secret motive--because it had come to his ears that Onesimus had been the slave who had defeated the midnight attempt on the life of Britannicus. Onesimus, when he had drunk too much Sabine wine, had sometimes forgotten all reticence, and Nero believed that it was through him that certain dark secrets of the Palace had come to be whispered among the lower orders of the Roman population. Acte herself would have been powerless to defend him. One day Octavia, finding that her purple robes had been looked after less skilfully than they had been when under his care, had asked some question about him in the presence of Nero. The Emperor was angry at the mention of his name. Some slaves had been in the room on the occasion, and the circumstance had become notorious in the gossip of the Palace. The unhappy young Phrygian was told that he would probably be crucified; but if not, he would be tied to the furca and scourged, perhaps to death, with the horrible thongs. On his arrival at Rome the order was given. He was to be beaten-- practically to death. In indescribable anguish of soul he spent what he believed to be his last night on earth. Next morning the furca--two pieces of wood nailed together in the shape of the letter Λ--was placed on his neck, his hands were fast bound to the ends of the wood, and he was led out towards the Esquiline, where afterwards his corpse would be flung into the common pit. He was too much stunned and stupefied even to pray. The iron had entered deep into his soul. He looked on himself as a lost apostate who would end a life of miserable failure by entering into the outer gloom beyond, where he feared that the face of the Saviour of whom he once had heard would be utterly turned away from him. But his hour had not yet come. Stooping under the furca, with his arms already cramped by their unnatural position, he was led by the slaves and lictors who were to preside at his execution into the Vicus Tuscus on the way to the Esquiline. But as they entered the long street a boy who was strolling towards the Gelotian house caught sight of them, and no sooner had his quick eye seen them than he took in the whole situation at a glance.