Plautia had no recollection of the way, but her companion had been more attentive. They went almost straight to the narrow outer door which they required. To their joy it opened to their touch, and they passed outside. Before them was a long stretch of ornamental garden of irregular shape, but rectangular in the main. It was picturesquely laid out with artificial mounds, grottoes, and groves, in the miniature semblance of a sylvan wilderness, and the whole was encircled by a wall. In this outside domain, as within‐doors, no living being was visible. The storm still roared and blustered. The winding irregular parapet of the wall was the horizon, and above it the gray watery masses of clouds drove across the sky. Even, sheltered as they were, the trees and shrubs of the tiny thickets and groves bent low to the blast. It had, of course, been previously necessary to pass through a portion of this garden to enable them to reach the door of the palace. They proceeded at once to search for the entrance, and found it amid the winding depths of a grove and ornamental rockery‐work. It profited them nothing, however, for the door was as fast and firm as the wall in which it was embedded. They hurried on, looking for an opening, or a weak spot in the ring of masonry, for it was too lofty to afford any hope of surmountal. To hide it from view had taxed the utmost ingenuity of arrangement; but the efforts of the gardeners had met with considerable success. When the two females had swiftly threaded a succession of miniature alleys, glades, groves, and rocky glens, to the furthest end of the garden, and were skirting along the opposite side, on their return journey, their eyes were suddenly gladdened by observing the forbidding wall slope abruptly down, and continue at a considerably lower level. Moreover, here and there the earth was heaped up in grassy mounds, within three or four feet of the top. Up one of these Plautia sprang with a cry of joy. Reaching the summit, she stood aghast, for, as she peered over the parapet, nothing stood between her and the gray foam‐streaked water, more than a thousand feet below. Leaning over, she looked down the smooth wall, cunningly faced with the verge of the sheer cliffs, right down into the waters, roaring and dashing into spouts of foam against the rocks far away at the bottom. Nothing but a sea‐bird could ever set a foot there. She shivered and drew back, and the slave gave a cry of dismay. One or two observations more, where opportunity offered, gave the same result, and thus they arrived back at the palace. There was a wall of smooth‐dressed stone on one hand, high and unscaleable, and on the other was a leap of a thousand feet, plumb down into the foaming sea. The Roman damsel looked from one to the other with a fierce glance. She was entrapped, beyond doubt, and like a trapped animal she stood for a few moments, as if at bay, with scowling brows and labouring breast.