Someone in the mob lifting his face, looked up and saw the deacon at the window, and at once shouted, “There! there he is! Baudillas Macer, come down, sacrilegious one! That is he who carried the maiden away.” Then rose hoots and yells, and a boy putting his hands together and blowing produced an unearthly scream. “He is one of them! He is a ringleader! He has an ass’s head in the house to which he sacrifices our little ones. He it was who stuck needles into the child of the potter Fusius, and then gnawed off the cheeks and fingers. He can inform where is the daughter of Aulus Harpinius who was snatched from the basin of the god. Let us avenge on him the great sacrilege that has been committed. It was he who struck off the head of the god.” Then one flung a stone that crashed into the room, and had not Baudillas drawn back, it would have struck and thrown him down stunned. “Let the house be ransacked!” yelled the mob. “We will seek in it for the bones of the murdered children. Break open the door if he will not unfasten. Bring a ladder, we will enter by the windows. Someone ascend to the roof and drop into the _atrium_.” Then ensued a rush against the valves, but they were too solid to yield; and the bars held them firm, run as they were into their sockets in the solid wall. The slave Pedo now knocked on the inside. This was the signal that he was about to open. The soldiers drew up across the entrance, and when the door was opened, suffered none to enter the house save the deputy of the prefect with four of his police, and some of the leaders of the Cultores Nemausi. And now a strange calm fell on the hitherto troubled spirit of Baudillas. He was aware that no effort he could make would enable him to escape. His knees, indeed, shook under him as he went to the stairs to descend, and forgetting that the tenth step was broken, he stumbled at it and was nearly precipitated to the bottom. Yet all wavering, all hesitation in his mind was at an end. He saw the men in the court running about, calling to each other, peering into every room, cubicle, and closet; one called that the cellar was the place in which the infamous rites of the Christians were performed and that there would be found amphoræ filled with human blood. Then one shouted that in the _tablinum_ there was naught save a small table. Immediately after a howl rose from those who had penetrated to the _triclinium_, and next moment they came rushing forth in such excitement that they dragged down the curtain that hung before the door and entangled their feet in it. One, not staying to disengage himself, held up his hands and exhibited the broken head of the statue, that had been brought there by Marcianus, and by him left on the floor.