with a score of lights; while in at the doorway pressed the multitude—­the mob of low tapsters, brutal butchers, coarse pedlers, and drunkards just staggering from their cups.  The scene was one of pandemonium.  Dumnorix lay prone on a costly rug, whose graceful patterns were being dyed to a hideous crimson; over one divan lay a brigand—­struggling in the last agony of a mortal wound.  Three comrades lay stretched stiff and motionless on the floor.  Gory swords and daggers were strewn all over the atrium; the presses of costly wood had been torn open, their contents scattered across the room.  There was blood on the frescoes, blood on the marble feet of the magnificent Diomedes, which stood rigid in cold majesty on its pedestal, dominating the wreck below.

Agias with Fabia stood at the end of the atrium near the exit to the peristylium.  Demetrius, seemingly hardly breathed by his exertions, leaned on his captured long sword at his cousin’s side.  The multitude, for an instant, as they saw the ruin and slaughter, drew back with a hush.  Men turned away their faces as from a sight of evil omen.  Who were they to set foot in the mansion of the servants of the awful Vesta?  But others from behind, who saw and heard nothing, pressed their fellows forward.  The mob swept on.  As with one consent all eyes were riveted on Fabia.  What had happened?  Who was guilty?  Why had these men of violence done this wrong to the home of the hearth goddess?  And then out of a farther corner, while yet the people hesitated from reverence, staggered a figure, its face streaming with blood, its hands pressing its side.

“Quirites,” cried a voice, the voice of one speaking with but one remaining breath, “ye have rewarded me as the law demands; see that she” and a bloody forefinger pointed at Fabia, “who led me to this deed, is not unpunished. She is the more guilty!”

And with a groan the figure fell like a statue of wood to the pavement; fell heavily, and lay stirring not, neither giving any sound.  In his last moment Publius Gabinius had sought a terrible revenge.

And then madness seized on the people.

“She is his sweetheart!  She is his paramour!” cried a score of filthy voices.  “She has brought down this insult to the goddess!  There is no pontifex here to try her!  Tear her in pieces!  Strike!  Slay!”

But Demetrius had turned to his cousin.

“Agias,” he said, making himself heard despite the clamour, “do you believe the charge of that man?”

“No villain ever would avenge himself more basely.”

“Then at all costs we must save the lady.”

It was time.  A fat butcher, flourishing a heavy cleaver, had leaped forward; Fabia saw him with glassy, frightened eyes, but neither shrieked nor drew back.  But Demetrius smote the man with his long sword through the body, and the brute dropped the cleaver as he fell.

“Now,” and Demetrius seized the Vestal around the waist, as lightly as a girl would raise a kitten, and flung her across his shoulders.  One stride and he was in the passage leading to the peristylium; and before the mob could follow Agias had dashed the door in their faces, and shot the bolt.