"Ha! is it thou, Caius Fulvius?" replied Arvina. "I will speak with thee anon. Lead the men forward," he added, turning round in his saddle to the second Decurion of his troop, "my good Drusus. I will overtake you, ere you shall reach the Mulvian bridge." Here wheeling his horse to the side of the young nobleman, "Where hast thou been, Caius, that thou hast not heard? All the conspirators have been arrested. Lentulus, and Cethegus, Gabinius, Statilius, and Cæparius! They have confessed their letters—the Gaulish ambassadors, and Titus Volturcius have given evidence against them. The senate is debating even now on their doom." "Indeed! indeed! when did all this fall out?" enquired the other evidently in great astonishment. "Yesterday morning they were taken. The previous night, in the third watch, the ambassadors were stopped on the Mulvian bridge, and the treasonable papers found on Volturcius." "Ha! this is indeed news!" cried Caius. "What will befall Lentulus and the rest? Do men know anything!" "Death!" answered Arvina gravely. "Death! art thou certain? A Prætor, a consular of Rome! and all the others Senators! Death! Paullus?" "Death!" replied the other still more solemnly, than before. "Yet methinks! that rather should be a boon, than the fit penalty of such guilt! But where have you been, that you are ignorant of all this, and whom have you there?" Caius Fulvius shook his head sorrowfully, and a deep groan burst from the lips of the muffled man, a groan of rage mingled with hate and terror. "I will tell _thee_, Arvina," said the young man, after a moment’s pause, during which Paullus had been gazing with a singular, and even to himself incomprehensible, emotion at the captive horseman. "We have been sent to fetch _him_ back," and he pointed to his wretched cousin, "as he fled to join Catiline. We overtook him nigh to Volsinii." "Who—who—" exclaimed Arvina in a terrible hoarse voice—"By all the Gods! who is he?—" "Aulus—" "Ha! villain! villain! He shall die by my hand!" burst from Arvina’s lips with a stifled cry, and drawing his sword as he spoke, he made toward him. But Caius Fulvius, and several others of the clients threw themselves into the way, and the former said quietly but very firmly, "No—no, my Paullus, that must not be. His life is devoted to a baser doom; nor must his blood be shed by a hand so noble! But wherefore—Ha!" he exclaimed, interrupting himself in mid speech. "Ha! Julia, I remember—I remember—would to the Gods I could have rescued her." For one second’s space Paullus Arvina glared upon the speaker, as if he would have stabbed him where he sat on his horse motionless and unresisting; then, shaking his head with an abrupt impatient motion as if to rid himself of some fixed image or impression, he said, "You are right, Caius. But tell me! by the Gods! was she with him? saw you aught of her, as you took him?"