The ass, though naturally a good-tempered beast, had been most sadly tried through the day. He had been fed, indeed, out of mockery, as being the Christians’ god; but he did not understand the shouts and caprices of the crowd, and he only waited for an opportunity to show that he by no means acquiesced in the proceedings of the day. And now the difficulty was to move at all. The people kept crowding up the hollow road, and blocked the passage, and though the greater part of the rioters had either been left behind exhausted in Sicca itself, or had poured over the fields on each side of Agellius’s cottage, or gone right over the hill down into the valley beyond, yet still it was some time before the ass could move a step, and a time of nervous suspense it was both to Cæcilius and the youth who befriended him. At length what remained of the procession was persuaded to turn about and make for Sicca, but in a reversed order. It could not be brought round in so confined a space, so its rear went first and the ass and its burden came last. As they descended the hill back again, Cæcilius, who was mounted upon the linen and silk which had adorned the Dea Syra before the Tertullianist had destroyed the idol, saw before him the whole line of march. In front were flaunted the dreadful emblems of idolatry, so far as their bearers were able still to raise them. Drunken women, ragged boys mounted on men’s shoulders, ruffians and bullies, savage-looking Getulians, half-human monsters from the Atlas, monkeys and curs jabbering and howling, mummers, bacchanals, satyrs, and gesticulators, formed the staple of the procession. Midway between the hill which he was descending and the city lay the ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain or Campus Martius, which reached round to the steep cliffs on the north. The bridle-path, along which he was moving, crossed it just where it was opening and became level, so as to present no abrupt descent and ascent at the place where the path was lowest. On the left every vestige of the ravine soon ceased, and a free passage extended to the plain.

The youth who had placed Cæcilius on the ass still kept close to him and sung at the pitch of his voice, in imitation of the rest—

“Sporting and snorting in shades of the night,

His ears pricking up, and his hoofs striking light,

And his tail whisking round, in the speed of his flight.”

“Old man,” he continued to Cæcilius in a low voice, and in Latin, “your curse has not worked on me yet.”

“My son,” answered the priest, “you are granted one day more for repentance.”

“Lucky for you as well as for me,” was the reply: and he continued his song:—

“Gurta, the witch, was out with the rest;