“Always: every where. Thou hast haunted me in my dreams; thou hast danced before me like a meteor, and I have tried in vain to grasp thee. Thou hast been my tormentor, my evil genius. I have hated thee; devoted thee to the infernal gods; cursed thee and loathed thee; and now my day of vengeance is come.” “Methinks,” replied Pancratius, smiling, “this does not look like a combat. It has been all on one side; for _I_ have done none of these things towards thee.” “No? thinkest thou that I believe thee, when thou hast lain ever as a viper on my path, to bite my heel and overthrow me?” “Where, I again ask?” “Every where, I repeat. At school; in the Lady Agnes’s house; in the Forum; in the cemetery; in my father’s own court; at Chromatius’s villa. Yes, every where.” “And nowhere else but where thou hast named? when thy chariot was dashed furiously along the Appian way, didst thou not hear the tramp of horses’ hoofs trying to overtake thee?” “Wretch!” exclaimed the prefect’s son in a fury; “and was it thy accursed steed which, purposely urged forward, frightened mine, and nearly caused my death?” “No, Corvinus, hear me calmly. It is the last time we shall speak together. I was travelling quietly with a companion towards Rome, after having paid the last rites to our master Cassianus” (Corvinus winced, for he knew not this before), “when I heard the clatter of a runaway chariot; and then, indeed, I put spurs to my horse; and it is well for thee that I did.” “How so?” “Because I reached thee just in time: when thy strength was nearly exhausted, and thy blood almost frozen by repeated plunges in the cold canal; and when thy arm, already benumbed, had let go its last stay, and thou wast falling backwards for the last time into the water. I saw thee: I knew thee, as I took hold of thee, insensible. I had in my grasp the murderer of one most dear to me. Divine justice seemed to have overtaken him; there was only my will between him and his doom. It was my day of vengeance, and I fully gratified it.” “Ha! and how, pray?” “By drawing thee out, and laying thee on the bank, and chafing thee till thy heart resumed its functions; and then consigning thee to thy servants, rescued from death.” “Thou liest!” screamed Corvinus; “my servants told me that _they_ drew me out.” “And did they give thee my knife, together with thy leopard-skin purse, which I found on the ground, after I had dragged thee forth?” “No; they said the purse was lost in the canal. It _was_ a leopard-skin purse, the gift of an African sorceress. What sayest thou of the knife?” “That it is here, see it, still rusty with the water; thy purse I gave to thy slaves; my own knife I retained for myself; look at it again. Dost thou believe me now? Have I been always a viper on thy path?”