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morning he is supposed to have escaped—but be that as it may, they were looking for him.”

“Good!” exclaimed von Harben. “I shall feel better just knowing that he is at large, though there is nothing that he can do for me. Where could he have gone?”

“Castrum Mare is ill guarded along its waterfront, but the lake itself and the crocodiles form a barrier as efficacious as many legionaries. Gabula may have scaled the wall, but the chances are that he is hiding within the city, protected by other slaves or, possibly, by Septimus Favonius himself.”

“I wish I might feel that the poor, faithful fellow had been able to escape the country and return to his own people,” said von Harben.

Mallius Lepus shook his head. “That is impossible,” he said. “Though you came down over the cliff, he could not return that way, and even if he could find the pass to the outer world, he would fall into the hands of the soldiers of Castra Sanguinarius or the black barbarians of their outer villages. No, there is no chance that Gabula will escape.”

The time passed quickly, all too quickly, between the hour that Erich von Harben was returned to his cell, following his exhibition in the triumph of Validus Augustus, and the coming of the Colosseum guards to drive them into the arena.

The Colosseum was packed. The loges of the patricians were filled. The haughty Caesar of the East sat upon an ornate throne, shaded by a canopy of purple linen. Septimus Favonius sat with bowed head in his loge and with him was his wife and Favonia. The girl sat with staring eyes fixed upon the gateway from which the contestants were emerging. She saw her cousin, Mallius Lepus, emerge and with him Erich von Harben, and she shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them again the column was forming and the contestants were marched across the white sands to receive the commands of Caesar. With Mallius Lepus and von Harben marched the twenty political prisoners, all of whom were of the patrician class. Then came the professional gladiators—coarse, brutal men, whose business it was to kill or be killed. Leading these, with a bold swagger, was one who