Mrs. Sprague was glad to sit quietly on her camp-stool and let the children wander about the enormous buildings under the direction of the guide. Of all the treasures, Rafael liked best the pictures in the Vatican by the great painter Rafael, for whom he was named; but Edith was more interested in the mosaics and statues in the cathedral, and in the huts of the workmen who live on the roof, and spend all their time in repairing the vast church. During the noon hours they had stayed in the hotel, where their rooms had gradually taken on a most homelike appearance. Beautiful, bright-colored Roman scarfs found their way from the shops to the children's tables, and photographs of the places that they had visited turned the walls into picture galleries. Rosaries, bought from old women on the church steps, and later blessed by the Pope, hung over the mirrors. In their work-baskets Edith and her mother always had a bit of sewing to catch up at odd moments, and there were books, maps and papers everywhere. Rafael fitted into this cozy atmosphere with wonderful ease. He never returned from a walk without a bouquet of flowers for the vases on the tables, and he fell into a way of carrying a light camp-stool in their excursions through the picture-galleries, so that Mrs. Sprague could sit down when she was tired. But this morning Mrs. Sprague was to visit some friends who were spending the winter in Rome, and Edith and Rafael were going alone with Professor Gates to the Colosseum. "There is nothing new under the sun," said Rafael, as they stepped out of the hotel elevator. "I have just been reading that there were elevators in the Colosseum nearly two thousand years ago." "They couldn't have been much like this fine one," said Edith. "What were they for?" she asked, taking out her note-book. "They were used to lift the fierce wild animals out of the underground pits where they were kept until it was time for them to fight in the arena," Rafael told her, and added, "You haven't much more room in that note-book." "The only way I can remember all you tell me is by making a note of it," Edith replied with a laugh, and turned to greet the guide, who had a carriage waiting for them. There were many other tourists' carriages standing outside the great ruin of the Colosseum, but as the professor led the two children under the arches and into the arena they were hardly conscious of these other sight-seers, so vast is this king of buildings. "The Colosseum was an enormous out-door theatre which seated over eighty-seven thousand people, and there was standing room for many more," the guide told them. As Edith climbed up to sit on one of the stone seats, Rafael said, "Think of all the old Romans who sat on these same stones, and who looked down into that arena at the terrible battles between men and beasts." [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM AT ROME. This enormous out-door theatre seated eighty-seven thousand people.]