"To bring the barbarian vengeance upon this house?" responded
Verronax.

"Alas, my son, thou know'st mine oath."

"I know it, my father."

"It forbids not thy ransoming thyself."

Verronax smiled slightly, and touched the collar at his throat.

"This is all the gold that I possess."

The Senator rapidly appraised it with his eye. There was a regular
tariff on the lives of free Romans, free Goths, guests, and trusted
men of the King; and if the deceased were merely a LITE, or freeman
of the lowest rank, it was just possible that the gold collar might
purchase its master's life, provided he were not too proud to part
with the ancestral badge.

By this time the tribunal had been reached--a special portion of the
peristyle, with a curule chair, inlaid with ivory, placed on a
tesselated pavement, as in the old days of the Republic, and a
servant on each side held the lictor's axe and bundle of rods, which
betokened stern Roman justice, wellnigh a mockery now. The forum of
the city would have been the regular place, but since an earthquake
had done much damage there, and some tumults had taken place among
the citizens, the seat of judgment had by general consent been
placed in the AEmilian household as the place of chief security, and
as he was the accredited magistrate with their Gothic masters, as