EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
games; about the military methods of their people, their laws and their customs until he, who all his life had been accounted taciturn, might easily have been indicted for loquacity by his fellow prisoners, yet, though they might not realize it, he asked them nothing without a well-defined purpose.
Upon the third day of his incarceration another prisoner was brought to the crowded cell in which Tarzan was chained. He was a young white man in the tunic and cuirass of an officer. He was received in silence by the other prisoners, as seemed to be the custom among them, but after he had been fastened to the remaining ring and the soldiers who had brought him had departed, Cassius Hasta greeted him with suppressed excitement.
“Caecilius Metellus!” he exclaimed.
The other turned in the direction of Hasta’s voice, his eyes not yet accustomed to the gloom of the dungeon.
“Hasta!” he exclaimed “I would know that voice were I to hear it rising from the blackest depths of Tartarus.”
“What ill fortune brought you here?” demanded Hasta.
“It is no ill fortune that unites me with my best friend,” replied Metellus.
“But tell me how it happened, ” insisted Cassius Hasta.
“Many things have happened since you left Castrum Mare,” replied Metellus “Fulvus Fupus has wormed his way into the favor of the Emperor to such an extent that all of your former friends are under suspicion and in actual danger. Mallius Lepus is in prison. Septimus Favonius is out of favor with the Emperor and would be in prison himself were it not that Fupus is in love with Favonia, his daughter. But the most outrageous news that I have to communicate to you is that Validus Augustus has adopted Fulvus Fupus and has named him as his successor to the imperial purple.”
“Fupus a Caesar!” cried Hasta, in derision. “And sweet Favonia? It cannot be that she favors Fulvus Fupus?”
“No,” replied Metellus, “and that fact lies at the bottom of all the trouble. She loves another, and Fupus, in his desire to possess her, has utilized the Emperor's jealousy of you to destroy every obstacle that stands in his way.”
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