Then he would have perceived the fierce, resolute Pagan, moving
through darkness and obstacles with a sure, solemn progress, drawing
after him, like a dog devoted to his will, the young girl whose hapless
fate had doomed her to fall into his power. Her half-fainting figure
might have been seen, sometimes prostrate on the higher places of the
breach, while her fearful guide descended before her into a chasm
beyond, and then turned to drag her after him to a darker and a lower
depth yet; sometimes bent in supplication, when her lips moved once more
with a last despairing entreaty, and her limbs trembled with a final
effort to escape from her captor's relentless grasp. While still,
through all that opposed him, the same fierce tenacity of purpose would
have been invariably visible in every action of Ulpius, constantly
confirming him in his mad resolution to make his victim the follower of
his progress through the wall, ever guiding him with a strange instinct
through every hindrance, and preserving him from every danger in his
path, until it brought him forth triumphant, with his prisoner still in
his power, again free to tread the desolate streets and mingle with the
famine-stricken citizens of Rome.
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