It needs not to tell how his furious jailors burst in upon his solitude. How they dragged him to the arena. How, when the blindness from the intolerable sunlight had passed, he beheld the crowded rank on rank of eager spectators, and heard the shout which greeted a fresh victim. He looked upward to the clear, blue sky, where soft, lovely clouds floated here and there, and he inhaled the sweet, elastic air. There was the usual offer of reprieve, pardon, life, at the cost of a single act of idolatry. There was heard at the same instant, the savage roar of the hungry lion, now kept near in waiting for his prey. There was the shout of triumph when that last offer was refused, calmly, contemptuously. Then he quickly found himself alone in the vast arena. Other victims had been there before him. He saw the blood, hastily and slightly covered--he looked round once more; alas! there was no human eye to pity, and no hand to spare. With a bound the mighty beast was in the arena, and close upon him. It was soon over. This was the conclusion of the day's spectacle, and plebeian and patrician Romans were on their way homeward, talking of this and that, merrily, carelessly; and the so lately crowded Amphitheatre was solitary and deserted. But the sun, with his mighty eye, looked down upon the guilty spot, and his hot beam drank up a portion of the fresh blood, and the winds of heaven sighed round it, and the clouds came and cast their shadows over it; and centuries have passed since then, and still the sun and winds and clouds have gone about it, day after day, and still the eye of God beholds, and its dumb walls and crumbling arches cry aloud for vengeance. GAME-BIRDS OF AMERICA.--NO. X. THE RAIL. (_Rallus._ LINNAEUS.) Taken altogether, the generic characters of the several kinds of Rail may be stated to be as follows: the bill longer than the head, straight or slightly curved, compressed at the base, and cylindrical toward the tips, the upper mandible channeled, the nostrils opening longitudinally at the base of the bill in the grooves, open through and through, but in part closed with membrane; legs very stout, bare of feathers to some distance above the tarsal joints, with three long toes to the front and one to the rear, articulated on the tarsus, the front toes free or divided to their bases; the wings of mean length and rounded, the first quill being shorter than the second, and the third and fourth the longest in the wing.