“I am here also,” Casca said, touching Anna’s arm. “I have escaped from the Coliseum, where I was forced to go with Antonius.” Anna made no rejoinder, except to put her hand upon the boy and lead him on. The two poor peasant women and Rebekah followed, and the long passage ended just where the lamp hung. By its dim light they crossed to another low doorway, and then guided by another lamp, threaded their way through several galleries and passages, till they reached an open space where some fifty people had assembled. This larger space was pierced through the rock and ground above with several openings, through which the sky could be seen. Two lamps hung over the slab of a tomb of one of the faithful departed, and there the vessels for the Holy Communion were placed. A young deacon was speaking when Anna and her friends came in, leading the poor women by the hand. The young deacon ceased speaking, and inquired the names of the new-comers, and their errand. “I have brought this youth,” Anna said, “a Roman of noble birth, who is anxious to know more of the Faith. This young woman is a Jewess, and these peasants,” she continued, “have just been rescued from the jaws of death. They were being dragged to the arena, when they were met by a procession of vestal virgins and released.” Several of the little assembly rose, and made the new-comers welcome, getting food and drink for them, in their fainting condition, from one of the openings behind the tombs. The Catacombs at Rome are now visited by many--and what pictures rise out of the past as the long subterranean passages become peopled with the early Christians, who bore thither their dead, laying them in the tombs cut out of the rock, and encircling them with all the tender memories of Him whom they believed to have opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. The word Catacomb, is, we are told, modern; but the Greek word, Cæmeteria, or sleeping place, was the one dear to the Christians, and always used by them to express their faith in the words--“Them that sleep in Jesus shall God bring unto Him.” It was this sleeping in Christ and this glorious awakening, which to those early Christians, with their simple unwavering faith, was a near and great reality, of which the preacher spoke that night. Casca, who had been studying deeply since he came to Rome the words of poets and philosophers, who had listened with profound attention to the learned orations from the Rostra, and who had, even before he had left Verulam, pondered much the mysteries of life and death, now followed every word with hungry eagerness. The spirit of unbelief in the old system of the gods was spreading rapidly. The Olympus of old Rome was fading into thin air. Many in the educated and higher ranks of society went through the form of attending the sacrifices, and offering at the shrines on appointed festivals, who felt it was but a form.