For ten minutes or more, blaze succeeded blaze, and crash followed crash, with such tremendous rapidity, that the whole heavens, nay, the whole atmosphere, appeared incandescent with white, sulphureous, omnipresent fire; and that the roar of the volleyed thunder was continuous and incessant. Still the fierce traitor blenched not. Crime and success had maddened him. His heart was hardened, his head frenzied, to his own destruction. But the winter storm in the mountains was as brief as it was sudden, and tremendous; and it ceased as abruptly as it broke out unexpectedly. A tempest of hail came pelting down, the grape-shot as it were of that heavenly artillery, scourging the earth with furious force during ten minutes more; and then the night was as serene and tranquil as it had been before that elemental uproar. As the last flash of lightning flickered faintly away, and the last thunder roll died out in the sky, Catiline stirred the freedman with his foot. "Get up, thou coward fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, man, I say, get up!" "Is it thou, Sergius Catiline?" asked the Greek, scarce daring to raise his head from the ground. "Did not the bolt annihilate thee? art thou not indeed dead?"— "Judge if I be dead, fool, by this, and this, and this!"— And, with each word, he kicked and trampled on the grovelling wretch with such savage violence and fury, that he bellowed and howled for mercy, and was scarce able to creep out of the apartment, when he ceased stamping upon him, and ordered him to begone speedily and bring his charger. Ere many minutes had elapsed, the traitor was on horse-back. And issuing from the gates of his camp into the calm and starry night, he drove, with his escort at his heels, with the impetuosity and din of a whirlwind, waking the mountain echoes by the clang of the thundering hoofs, and the clash of the brazen armor and steel scabbards, down the steep defile toward Usella. CHAPTER XVI. THE WATCHTOWER OF USELLA. Our castle’s strength Will laugh a siege to scorn. MACBETH. The watchtower in which Caius Crispus and his gang had taken refuge from the legionaries, was one of those small isolated structures, many of which had been perched in the olden time on the summits of the jutting crags, or in the passes of the Appennines, but most of which had fallen long before into utter ruin. Some had been destroyed in the border wars of the innumerable petty tribes, which, ere the Romans became masters of the peninsula, divided among themselves that portion of Italy, and held it in continual turmoil with their incessant wars and forays.