When alone, however, in his apartment, and safe from every eye, his mien altered. Fits of abstraction and restless pacings of the room passed the silent time, and as the hour of midnight approached, his impatience and nervousness grew more marked. Several times his hand rested on a small silver bell as if to ring, and, as often, after a few moments of indecision, with his ears strained to catch the least sound in the deep stillness, he turned away. Occasionally he went to one corner of the room, and, drawing back a curtain, placed his ear close against the wall for a few moments. Thence he would return to his seat and his book, for a space, to leave them by and by for another excursion. Many varied positions he occupied, now sitting, now reclining, now ambling hither and thither, impelled by the pains of impatience and anxiety. Trifling with this object, touching that, lifting and examining another, half unconsciously, his state of nervous unrest, finding full vent within the deaf and sightless walls of his retreat, was a wonderful relaxation from the inscrutable impassiveness of his public demeanour. Midnight had barely passed, when two or three taps proceeded from that corner of the room where he had often paid a visit, and bent a listening ear. His face cleared instantly, and he stepped at once toward the sound. Stooping down he pressed a particular spot in the angle of the wall, and a narrow, secret panel, wholly indistinguishable before, shot silently and swiftly upward. Through the opening stepped Zeno. ‘Well?’ said Tiberius sharply; ‘at last! I have waited almost beyond my patience.’ ‘I have not lingered one second longer than I could possibly help,’ replied the Greek; ‘to have come sooner would have been rash.’ ‘Is all safe now?’ ‘Quite—he is off as sound as can be.’ ‘And you are sure that no soul has passed from the palace outwards since supper?’ ‘Especial orders were given to all the guards.’ ‘Come, then!’ They stepped through the secret opening and drew down the shutter after them. It closed with a subdued, but clear ‘click,’ which denoted the hidden instrumentality of a highly‐perfected spring. Zeno went on first with the lamp. They descended two narrow winding flights of steps cut in the rock; and at their foot, another door, as cunningly contrived and hidden away, gave way to their potent touch in the same mysterious manner. They were now in a wider gallery, all rock‐hewn and faced with brick. On either side were ranged doors; and, at a little distance away, a lamp hung from the ceiling, like a yellow beacon light struggling with the subterranean gloom. Immediately beneath this lamp Zeno halted before a door. ‘Are there none but ourselves below?’ muttered Tiberius. ‘No one,’ returned Zeno; ‘I despatched every one on one pretence and another, and having seen all clear, locked up the main outlet myself.’