However this may be, her stolen interview or interviews with this stranger were not known at the time, and Rhea perhaps thought that her fault would never be discovered. Some weeks after this, however, it was observed by her companions and friends that she began to appear thoughtful and depressed. Her dejection increased day by day; her face became wan and pale, and her eyes were often filled with tears. They asked her what was the cause of her trouble. She said that she was sick. She was soon afterward excused from her duties in the Vestal temple, and went away, and remained for some time shut up in retirement and seclusion. There at length two children, twins, were born to her. It was only through the influence of Antho, Rhea's cousin, that the unhappy vestal was not put to death by Amulius, before her children were born, at the time when her fault was first discovered. The laws of the State in respect to vestal virgins, which were inexorably severe, would have justified him in causing her to be executed at once, but Antho interceded so earnestly for her unhappy cousin, that Amulius for a time spared her life. When, however, her sons were born, the anger of Amulius broke out anew. If she had remained childless he would probably have allowed her to live, though she could of course never have been restored to her office in the temple of Vesta. Or if she had given birth to a daughter she might have been pardoned, since a daughter, on account of her sex, would have been little likely to disturb Amulius in the possession of the kingdom. But the existence of two sons, born directly in the line of the succession, and each of them having claims superior to his own, endangered, most imminently, he perceived, his possession of power. He was of course greatly enraged. He caused Rhea to be shut up in close imprisonment, and as for the boys, he ordered them to be thrown into the Tiber. The Tiber was at some considerable distance from Alba; but it was probably near the place where Rhea had resided in her retirement, and where the children were born. A peasant of that region was intrusted with the task of throwing the children into the river. Whether his official duty in undertaking this commission required him actually to drown the boys, or whether he was allowed to give the helpless babes some little chance for their lives, is not known. At all events he determined that in committing the children to the stream he would so arrange it that they should float away from his sight, in order that he might not himself be a witness of their dying struggles and cries. He accordingly put them upon a species of float that he made,--a sort of box or trough, as would seem from the ancient descriptions, which he had hollowed out from a log,--and disposing their little limbs carefully within this narrow receptacle, he pushed the frail boat, with its navigators still more frail, out upon the current of the river. [Illustration: FAUSTULUS AND THE TWINS.]