"We shall stick together, Mallius Lepus," said von Harben. "To the end," replied the Roman. "And here is Gabula," said von Harben, as the black joined them. "He shall come with us." "We cannot desert the brave Gabula," said Mallius Lepus, "but the first thing for us to do is to find a hiding-place." "There is a low wall across the avenue," said von Harben, "and there are trees beyond it." "Come, then," said Mallius Lepus. "It is as good for now as any other place." The three men hurried across the avenue and scaled the low wall, finding themselves in a garden so overgrown with weeds and underbrush that they at once assumed that it was deserted. Creeping through the weeds and forcing their way through the underbrush, they came to the rear of a house. A broken door, hanging by one hinge, windows from which the wooden blinds had fallen, an accumulation of rubbish upon the threshold marked the dilapidated structure as a deserted house. "Perhaps this is just the place for us to hide until night," said von Harben. "Its proximity to the Colosseum is its greatest advantage," said Mallius Lepus, "for they will be sure to believe that we have rushed as far from our dungeon as we could. Let us go in and investigate. We must be sure that the place is uninhabited." The rear room, which had been the kitchen, had a crumbling brick oven in one corner, a bench and a dilapidated table. Crossing the kitchen, they entered an apartment beyond and saw that these two tombs constituted all that there was to the house. The front room was large and as the blinds at the windows facing the avenue had not fallen, it was dark within it. In one corner they saw a ladder reaching to a trap-door in the ceiling, which evidently led to the roof of the building, and two or three feet below the ceiling and running entirely across the end of the room where the ladder arose was a false ceiling, which formed a tiny loft just below the roof-beams, a place utilized by former tenants as a storage-room. A more careful examination of the room revealed nothing more than a pile of filthy rags against one wall, the remains perhaps of some homeless beggar's bed. "It could not have been better," said Mallius Lepus, "if this had been built for us. Why, we have three exits if we are hard pressed--one into the back garden, one into the avenue in front, and the third to the roof." "We can remain in safety, then," said von Harben, "until after dark, when it should be easy to make our way unseen through the dark streets to the home of Septimus Favonius." _Chapter Twenty-two_ East along the Via Mare from Castra Sanguinarius marched five thousand men. The white plumes of the Waziri nodded at the back of Tarzan. Stalwart legionaries followed Maximus Praeclarus, while the black warriors of the outer villages brought up the rear.