He glanced back with a shudder upon his wounded and helpless limb; then
his eyes fixed themselves upon the wall. After surveying it with an
earnest and defiant gaze, he slowly moved the brushwood with his foot,
against the small cavity in its outer surface.
'Days pass, wounds heal, chances change,' muttered the old man,
departing from his haunt with slow and uncertain steps. 'In the mines I
have borne lashes without a murmur--I have felt my chains widening, with
each succeeding day, the ulcers that their teeth of iron first gnawed in
my flesh, and have yet lived to loosen my fetters, and to close my
sores! Shall this new agony have a power to conquer me greater than the
others that are past? I will even yet return in time to overcome the
resistance of the wall! My arm is crushed, but my purpose is whole!'
CHAPTER 13. THE HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS.
Retracing some hours, we turn from the rifted wall to the suburbs and
the country which its ramparts overlook; abandoning the footsteps of the
maimed and darkly-plotting Ulpius, our attention now fixes itself on the
fortunes of Hermanric, and the fate of Antonina.
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