"And the dream!" asked the smith eagerly, grasping the handle of his heavy hammer firmly, and setting his teeth hard. "Had vanished," replied the other calmly, and looking him full in the eye. "Bar the door, Aulus," cried the smith, hastily. "This fellow must die here, or he will betray us," and he caught him by the throat, as he spoke, with an iron grip, to prevent him from calling out or giving the alarm. But the stranger, though not to be compared in bulk or muscular proportions with the gigantic artizan, shook off his grasp with contemptuous ease, and answered with a scornful smile, "Betray you!—tush, I am Fulvius Flaccus." Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of the smith, he could not have recoiled with wilder wonder. "What, Fulvius Flaccus, to whose great wrongs all injuries endured by us are but as flea-bites! Fulvius, the grandson of that Fulvius Flaccus, who—" "Was murdered by Opimius, while striving for the liberties of Romans. But what is this! By Mars and Quirinus! there is something afoot without!" And, as he uttered the words, he sprang to the wicket, which Aulus had not fastened, and gazed out earnestly into the darkness, through which the regular and steady tramp of men, advancing in ordered files, could now be heard distinctly. The others were beside him in an instant, with terror and amazement on their faces. They had not long to wait, before the cause of their alarm became visible. It was a band of some five hundred stout young men of the upper classes, well armed with swords and the oblong bucklers of the legion, though wearing neither casque nor cuirass, led by a curule ædile, who was accompanied by ten or twelve of the equestrian order, completely armed, and preceded by his _apparitores_ or beadles, and half a dozen torch-bearers. These men passed swiftly on, in treble file, marching as fast as they could down the Sacred Way, until they reached the intersection of the street of Apollo; by which they proceeded straight up the ascent of the Palatine, whereon they were soon lost to view, among the splendid edifices that covered its slope and summit. "By all the Gods!" cried Caius Crispus, "This is exceedingly strange! An armed guard at this time of night!" "Hist! here is something more." And, as old Bassus spoke, Antonius, the consul, who was supposed to be attached to the faction of Catiline, came down a bye-street, from the lower end of the Carinæ, preceded by his torch-bearers, and followed by a lictor(18) with his fasces. He was in full dress too, as one of the presiding magistrates of the senate, and bore in his hand his ivory sceptre, surmounted by an eagle. As soon as he had passed the door of the forge, Crispus stepped out into the street, motioning his guests to follow him, and desiring his foreman to lock the door.