The choking tribune was snatched from the grapple, and the prisoner's feet and hands were securely bound. At this moment in the barrack court resounded the shouts of the Flavian soldiers--"Long live Cæsar Gallus!" and the murderers hurried on with their job. A great section of a tree-trunk was rolled in for a block, and Gallus thrust down on his knees in front of it. Barbatio, Baïnobadois, and Apodemus gripped him by the shoulders, hands, and feet; and Scuda bowed the head against the block, weighing down that vainly resisting skull with all his might. Chilled by emotion, his fingers felt the newly-shorn pate still moist with soap. The butcher proved an unskilful headsman. His axe slashed the neck, but the blow fell awry. He raised the hatchet a second time, crying to Scuda-- "More to the right! Hold the head more to the right!" Gallus struggled and roared like a half-stunned bull. Nearer and nearer the cries of the soldiery resounded: "Long live Gallus Cæsar!" The butcher heaved his handle high and smote. A stream of blood gushed over the hands of Scuda; the head fell with a thud, and rolled away over the stone flags. At that moment the legionaries burst into the hall. Barbatio, Apodemus, and Scuda hurried to the opposite door, the headsman remaining at a loss; but Scuda muttered in his ear-- "Take Cæsar's head, so that the legionaries may not recognise the body. It's a question of life or death for us all!" "He was _not_ a thief then?" faltered the executioner, in amazement. He found it difficult to carry this shaven head; at first he slid it under an arm, but it became uncomfortable; then, slipping his hooked thumb into the mouth, he managed to bear off the skull of him before whom so many heads had once bowed down. * * * * * Julian, on learning the death of his brother, said quietly to himself-- "Now comes my turn!" XII It was at Athens that Julian was about to take his vows and finally become a monk. One fresh spring morning, before the sun was up, Julian, issuing from the church where he had officiated at matins, followed for a few miles the banks of the Ilissus, in the shadow of plane-trees and wild vine. Not far from Athens he had lighted upon a solitary place, on the edge of a torrent which poured, like a scarf of silver, upon a sandy bottom. Thence he used often to gaze with wonder through the mists at the ruddy cliff of the Acropolis and the haughty lines of the Parthenon, half-illumined by the dawn. On this particular morning Julian took off his shoes and walked along the reaches of the Ilissus barefoot. The air was full of the smell of flowers and of the rich-scented muscat grape--that aroma in which there is a foretaste of wine, faint as the promise of first love, stealing into the soul of youth.