“You are right, my friend; I must make it out that a strong body attacked you, and killed you at your post. So shut yourself up in quarters for a few days, and you shall have plenty of beer, till the thing blows over.” The soldier went off, and concealed himself. A few days after, the dead body of a Dacian, evidently murdered, was washed on the banks of the Tiber. It was supposed he had fallen in some drunken row; and no further trouble was taken about it. The fact was indeed so; but Corvinus could have given the best account of the transaction. Before, however, leaving the ill-omened spot in the Forum, he had carefully examined the ground, for any trace of the daring act; when he picked up, close under the place of the edict, a knife, which he was sure he had seen at school, in possession of one of his companions. He treasured it up, as an implement of future vengeance, and hastened to provide another copy of the decree. [Illustration: An Emblem of Paradise, found in the Catacombs.] CHAPTER XV. EXPLANATIONS. When morning had fairly broken, crowds streamed, from every side, into the Forum, curious to read the tremendous edict so long menaced. But when they found only a bare board, there was a universal uproar. Some admired the spirit of the Christians, so generally reckoned cowardly; others were indignant at the audacity of such an act; some ridiculed the officials concerned in the proclamation; others were angry that the expected sport of the day might be delayed. At an early hour the places of public fashionable resort were all occupied with the same theme. In the great Antonian Thermæ a group of regular frequenters were talking it over. There were Scaurus the lawyer, and Proculus, and Fulvius, and the philosopher Calpurnius, who seemed very busy with some musty volumes, and several others. “What a strange affair this is, about the edict!” said one. “Say rather, what a treasonable outrage against the divine emperors!” answered Fulvius. “How was it done?” asked a third. “Have you not heard,” said Proculus, “that the Dacian guard stationed at the Puteal was found dead, with twenty-seven poniard-wounds on him, nineteen of which would have sufficed each by itself to cause death?” “No, that is quite a false report,” interrupted Scaurus; “it was not done by violence, but entirely by witchcraft. Two women came up to the soldier, who drove his lance at one, and it passed clean through her, and stuck in the ground on the other side, without making any wound in her. He then hacked at the other with his sword, but he might as well have struck at marble. She then threw a pinch of powder upon him, and he flew into the air, and was found, asleep and unhurt, this morning, on the roof of the Æmilian basilica. A friend of mine, who was out early, saw the ladder up, by which he had been brought down.” “Wonderful!” many exclaimed. “What extraordinary people these Christians must be!”