girl, this beautiful boy, who lay before him pale corpses, had been
worthy of a better fate, and he might be made to answer for them; for the
law forbade that any Christian should be punished for his faith without a
judge's sentence. He therefore commanded that the dead should be carried
at once to the house to which they belonged, and threatened every one,
who should that day set foot in the Christian quarter, with the severest
punishment.

The beggar went off, shrieking and shouting, to his brother's house to
tell the mistress that lame Martha, who had nursed her daughter to death,
was slain; but he gained an evil reward, for the poor woman bewailed
Selene as if she had been her own child, and cursed him and her
murderers.

Before sundown Hadrian arrived at Besa, where he found magnificent tents
pitched to receive him and his escort. The disaster that had befallen
his statue was kept a secret from him, but he felt anxious and ill. He
wished to be perfectly alone, and desired Antinous to go to see the city
before it should be dark. The Bithynian joyfully embraced this
permission as a gift of the gods; he hurried through the decorated high
streets, and made a boy guide him from thence into the Christian quarter.
Here the streets were like a city of the dead; not a door was open, not a
man to be seen.

Antinous paid the lad, sent him away, and with a beating heart went from
one house to another. Each looked neat and clean, and was surrounded by
trees and shrubs, but though the smoke curled up from several of the
roofs every house seemed to have been deserted. At last he heard the
sound of voices. Guided by these he went through a lane to an open place
where hundreds of people, men, women and children, were assembled in