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Title: Andivius Hedulio

Author: Edward Lucas White

Release Date: December 1, 2004  [eBook #8532]

Language: English

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ANDIVIUS HEDULIO
Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire

BY
EDWARD LUCAS WHITE




Mirum atque inscitum somniavi somnium.
     --PLAUTUS


[Illustration: THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE SECOND CENTURY A.D.
To Show The Wanderings Of ANDIVIUS HEDULIO]

[Illustration: THE CITY OF ROME UNDER THE EMPIRE]



THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
WHO, IN READING FICTION, LOVED "THE OPEN ROAD AND THE BRIGHT EYES OF
DANGER"




CONTENTS

BOOK I. DISASTER

HEDULIO'S PREFACE

CHAPTER

I. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

II. A COUNTRY DINNER

III. TENANTRY AND SLAVERY

IV. HOROSCOPES AND MARVELS

V. ENCOUNTERS

VI. A RATHER BAD DAY

VII. A RATHER GOOD DAY

VIII. THE WATER GARDEN

IX. THE SQUALL OF THE LEOPARD


BOOK II.  DISAPPEARANCE

X. ESCAPE

XI. HIDING

XII. SUCCOUR

XIII. THE LONELY HUT

XIV. WINTER IN THE MOUNTAINS

XV. THE HUNT

XVI. THE CAVE

XVII. THE FESTIVAL

XVIII. GALLOPING

XIX. MARSEILLES AND TIBER WHARF

XX. CHARIOTEERING

XXI. MISADVENTURES


BOOK III.  DIVERSITIES

XXII. THE MUTINEERS

XXIII. THE EMPEROR

XXIV. THE MASSACRE

XXV. THE OPEN COUNTRY

XXVI. THE OUTLAWS

XXVII. THE POINT OF VIEW

XXVIII. MOONLIGHT


BOOK IV.  DISSIMULATIONS

XXIX. FELIX

XXX. FESTUS

XXXI. RECOGNITION

XXXII. PHORBAS

XXXIII. IMPOSTURE

XXXIV. PALUS THE INCOMPARABLE

XXXV. MURMEX

XXXVI. ANXIETY

XXXVII. ACCUSATION

XXXVIII. TORTURE

XXXIX. THE TULLIANUM

XL. SEVERUS

EPILOGUE

NOTES




ANDIVIUS HEDULIO




HEDULIO'S PREFACE

(PRAEFATIO HEDULIONIS)


By no means absurd, it seems to me, but altogether reasonable, is the
impulse which urges me to write out a detailed narrative of my years of
adversity and of the vicissitudes which befell me during that wretched
period of my life. My adventures, in themselves, were worthy of record and
my memories of them and of the men and women encountered in them are clear
and vivid. It is natural that I should wish to set them down for the
edification of my posterity and of any who may chance to read them.

For my experience has been, I believe, unique. Since the establishment of
the Principate in our Republic many men, even an uncountable horde of men,
have incurred Imperial displeasure. Of these not a few, after banishment
from Italy or relegation to guarded islands or to some distant frontier
outpost, have survived the Prince who exiled them and have, by the favor
of his successors, been permitted to return to Rome and to the enjoyment
of their property. But I believe that no Roman nobleman implicated, justly
or unjustly, in any conspiracy against the life of his Sovereign, ever
escaped the extreme penalty of death. Some, by their own hands,
forestalled the arrival of the Imperial emissaries, others perished by the
weapons or implements of those designated to abolish the enemies of the
Prince. Except myself not one ever survived to regain Imperial favor in a
later reign; except myself not one ever recovered his patrimony and
enjoyed, to a green old age, the income, position and privileges to which
he had been born. If such a thing ever occurred, certainly there is no
record of any other nobleman domiciled in Italy, except myself, having
grasped at the slender chance of escape afforded by the device of
arranging that he be supposed dead, of disguising himself, of vanishing
among the populace, of passing himself off for a man of the people. I not
only was led, by my clever slave, to attempt this histrionic feat, but I
succeeded in the face of unimaginable difficulties. An experience so
notably without a parallel seems peculiarly deserving of such a record as
follows.




BOOK I

DISASTER




CHAPTER I

AN UNEXPECTED GUEST


When I look back on the beginning of my adventures, I can set the very day
and hour when the tranquil course of my early life came to an end, when
the comfortable commonplaces of my previous existence altered, when the
placid current of my former life broke suddenly and without warning into
the tumultuous rapids which hurried me from surprise to surprise and from
peril to peril. The last hour of my serene youth was about the ninth of
the day, nearly midafternoon, on the Nones of June in the 937th year of
the city, [Footnote: A.D. 184. See Note C.] while Cossonius Marullus and
Papirius Aelian were consuls, when Commodus had already been four years
Emperor.

It was not that misfortune then suddenly overwhelmed me, not that, sharp
as a blown trumpet, I heard the voice of doom blare over me; not that, as
one sees the upper rim of the sun vanish beneath the waves where the
skyline meets the sea, and knows day ended and night begun, not thus that
I recognized the end of my prosperity and the beginning of my disasters.
That moment came later, as I shall record. It was rather that; as, in
certain states of the weather, long before sunset one may be suddenly
aware that afternoon is past and evening approaches; so, though I had no
intimation at the moment, yet, reviewing my memories I realize that at
that instant began the chain of trivial circumstances which led up to my
calamity and enmeshed me in ruin.

And just here I cannot but remark, what I have often meditated over, how
trifling, how apparently insignificant, are the circumstances which
determine the felicity or misery of human beings. I was possessed of an
ample estate; I was, in most difficult conditions, in unruffled amity with
all my neighbors, on both sides of the great feud, except only my
hereditary enemy; I was high in the favor of the Emperor; I was in a fair
way to marry the youngest, the most lovely and the richest widow in Rome.
In the twinkling of an eye I was cast down from the pinnacle of good
fortune into an abyss of adversity. And upon what did my catastrophe
hinge? Upon the whims of a friend and upon one oversight of my secretary.
I should have had no story to tell, I should have been a man continuously
happy, affluent and at ease, early married and passing from one high
office to the next higher in an uninterrupted progress of success, had it
not entered the head of my capricious crony to pay me an unexpected and
unannounced visit, had he not arrived precisely at the time at which he
came, had he not encountered just the persons he met just where he did
meet them, had not his prankishness hatched in him the vagary which led
him to give quizzical replies to their questions; had I not, carried away
by my elation at my prosperity and fine prospects, been a trifle too
indulgent to my tenantry.

Even after, as a result, the nexus of circumstances had been woven about
me and after I found myself embroiled with both my powerful neighbors, I
should have escaped any evil consequences had not my secretary, than whom
no man ever was more loyal to his master or more wary and inclusive in his
foresight upon every conceivable eventuality, failed to forecast the
possible effects of a minor omission.

When my story begins I had already had one small adventure, nothing much
out of the ordinary. Agathemer and I were returning from my final
inspection of my estate. As we rode past one of the farmsteads we heard
cries for help. Reining up and turning into the barn-yard, we found the
tenant himself being attacked by his bull. I dismounted and diverted the
animal's attention. After the beast was securely penned up I was riding
homewards more than a little tired, rumpled and heated and very eager for
a bath.

As we approached my villa we saw a runner coming up the road, a big Nubian
in a fantastic livery which when he reached us turned out to be entirely
unknown to me. My grooms were just taking our horses. The grinning black,
not a bit out of breath after his long run, saluted and addressed me.

"My master has sent me ahead to say he is coming to visit you."

"Who is your master?" I asked.

"My master," he said, still grinning goodnaturedly, "enjoined me not to
tell you who he is."

I turned to Agathemer.

"What do you make of this?" I asked.

"There is but one man in Italy," he replied, "who is likely to send you
such a message, and his name is on the tip of your tongue."

"And on the tip of yours, I'll wager," said I. "Both together now!"

I raised my finger and counted.

"One! Two! Three!"

Both together we uttered:

"Opsitius Tanno!"

There was no variation in the Nubian's non-committal grin. We went up the
steps and stood by the balustrade of the terrace, where it commanded a
good view of the valley. We could see a party approaching, a mounted
intendant in advance, a litter, extra bearers and runners and several
baggage mules.

"Nobody but Tanno would send me such a message," I said to Agathemer.

"No one else," he agreed, "but I should be no more surprised to see the
Emperor himself in this part of the world."

"One of his wild whims," I conjectured. "Nothing else would tear him away
from the city."

I meditated.

"Our arrangements for dinner," I continued, "fall in very well with his
coming. I suppose the guest-rooms are all ready, but you had best go see
to that, and meanwhile turn this fellow over to Ofatulenus."

Agathemer nodded. The pleasantest of his many good qualities was that
whatever he might be asked to do he carried out without comment or
objection. Nothing was too big or too small for him. If he were asked to
arrange for an interview with the Emperor or to attend to the creasing of
a toga he was equally painstaking and obliging. He went off, followed by
the negro. I waited on the terrace for Tanno. There was no use attempting
to bathe until after his arrival. Presently a cheerful halloo from the
litter reached my ears. It was Tanno to a certainty. Nobody else of my
acquaintance had voice enough to make himself heard at that distance or
was sufficiently lacking in dignity to emit a yawp in that fashion. When
his escort came near enough I could see that all his bearers wore the same
livery as his runner. Tanno was forever changing his liveries and each
fresh invention he managed to make more fantastic than the last. There
were eight bearers to the litter and some twenty reliefs. Travelling long
distances by litter, begun as a necessity to such invalids as my uncle,
had become a fashion through the extreme coxcombery of wealthy fops and
the practice of the young Emperor. Tanno's litter had all its panels slid
back, and the curtains were not drawn. He was sitting almost erect,
propped up by countless down cushions. He greeted me with many waves of
the hand and a smile as genial as his halloo. I went down a little from
the terrace to meet him and walked a few paces beside the litter. He
rolled out and embraced me cordially, appearing as glad to see me as I was
delighted to see him.

"I do not know," I said, "whether I am more surprised or pleased to see
you. To what do I owe my good fortune?"

"We simply cannot get on without you," he answered, "and I am going to
take you back to Rome with me. How soon can you start?"

"You came at the nick of time," said I, "I had expected to go down three
days from now, but I found out this afternoon that I can get away tomorrow
morning."

"Praise be to Hercules and all the gods," said Tanno. "I love the country
frantically, especially when I am in the city. I love it so that three
days on the road is enough country for me. I have been bored to death and
do so want a bath."

"The bath is all hot and ready," said I, "and the slaves waiting. But I am
giving a dinner this evening and nearly all my neighbors are coming. The
diners are almost due to arrive, I need a bath and want one, but I meant
to wait for my guests."

"Well," he said, "you have one guest here already and that's enough. Let's
bathe once, at once, and you can bathe again when your Sabine clodhoppers
get here. Life is too short for a man to get enough baths, anyhow. Two a
day is never enough for me. A pretext for two in an afternoon is always
welcome. Come on, let's bathe quick, so as to have it over with before the
first of the other guests arrives, then we can get a breath of fresh air
and be as keen for the second bath as for the first."

Conversation with Tanno consisted mostly in listening and interjecting
questions. He wallowed in the cold tank like a porpoise; caught me and
ducked me until I yelled for mercy, and while I was trying to get my
breath, half drowned me with the water he splashed over me with both
hands; talking incessantly, except when his head was under water. When we
lay down on the divan in the warm room he rattled on.

"You needn't tell me," he said, "that your runners haven't taken letters
to Vedia, but she is supposed not to hear from you, so, as I told of two
of your letters to me, I have, in a way been held responsible for you and
have been pelted with inquiries. Nemestronia loves you like a grandson,
and, if you ask me, I say Vedia is in love with you out and out. As I had
heard from you and nobody else had, I began to feel as if I ought to look
after you. Everything was abominably humdrum and I deceived myself into
thinking I should enjoy the smell of green fields. I certainly should have
turned back less than half way if I had been concerned with anybody else
than you; and when we turned off the Via Salaria into your country byroad
I cursed you and your neighbors and all Sabinum. The most deserted stretch
of road I ever travelled in all my life. I saw only six human beings
before I reached your villa and I had heard that this valley was populous
and busy. I slept last night at Vicus Novus and I started this morning,
bright and early. When we turned up the road below Villa Satronia I was
never more disgusted in my life. My men are perfectly matched in height,
weight, pace and action and any eight of the lot will carry me at full
speed as smoothly as a pleasure-barge. But they could make nothing of that
road. It is all washed, guttered, dusty in the open places, puddly where
trees hang over it and full of loose stones on top everywhere.

"I was so horribly jolted that I called the bearers to stop. I made
Dromanus get off his horse and give me his poncho and his big felt hat.
Then I got on his horse and told him to get into the litter. He was
embarrassed.

"'Pooh', said I, 'you cannot walk and we should look like fools with an
empty litter. Get in and be jounced! Draw the curtains; if we meet anybody
I'll give you an impressive title.' He rolled in among the cushions,
looking as foolish as possible. His horse ambled perfectly and I felt more
comfortable. I went on ahead. We had not met anybody since we turned into
the crossroads; about half a mile beyond the place where I had left my
litter I came around one of the innumerable curves a little ahead of the
procession and saw two men approaching on foot. When they came abreast of
me they saluted me politely and the taller, a black-haired, dark-faced
fellow with a broad jaw, inquired (in the tone he would have used to
Dromanus) whose litter I was escorting. I was rather tickled that they
took me for my own intendant. I judged we must be approaching the entrance
to Villa Satronia and that they were people from there. I assumed an
exaggerated imitation of Dromanus' most grandiloquent manner and in his
orotund unctuous delivery I declaimed:

"'My master is Numerius Vedius Vindex. He is asleep.' (They swallowed that
awful lie, they did not realize how bad their own road was.) 'We are on
our way to Villa Vedia.'

"They looked sour enough at that, I promise you, and I made out that they
were Satronians for certain. The two fellows exchanged a glance, thanked
me politely and went on.

"I knew the entrance to the Satronian estate by the six big chestnut-
trees, you had often described them to me; and I knew the next private
road by the single huge plane tree. But when we crossed the second bridge,
the little one, I went over that round hill and did not recognize the foot
of your road when we came to it. I was for going on. Dromanus called from
behind the curtains of the litter:

"'This is Hedulio's road: turn to the right.'

"I was stubborn and sang back at him:

"'Hedulio has told me all about this country. This is not his land. It is
further on at the next brook.'

"We went on over the next bridge past the entrance to the south, and I
felt more and more that Dromanus was right and I was wrong, and yet I grew
more and more stubborn. When we passed the sixth bridge and I saw the
stream getting bigger and turning to the left, I knew I was wrong. At the
crossroads I realized we were at the entrance to Villa Vedia, but I would
not give up, I took the left-hand turn and went down stream. Beyond the
first bend in the road we found ourselves approaching a long, straggling,
one-street village of tall, narrow stone houses along the eastern bank of
the little river. By the road, just before the first house, watching five
goats, was a boy, a boy with a crooked twitching face.

"'The village idiot,' I put in. 'They can never let him out of sight and
he is always beside the road.'

"He was not too big an idiot to tell us it was Vediamnum."

"He was enough of an idiot," I said, "to forget you, and your question the
next minute. The boy is almost a beast."

"He had enough sense to tell us the name of the village," Tanno retorted,
"and I had to acknowledge to Dromanus he was right, and so we turned
round. When we were hardly more than out of sight of Vediamnum we met
another party, a respectable-looking man, much like a farm bailiff, on
horseback, and two slaves afoot. I had not seen them before, and they,
apparently, had not previously seen us. The rider asked, very decently,
whose was the party. I treated them as I had the others.

"'My master is asleep,' I said again. (It was not such an improbable lie
that time, for the road by Vediamnum is pretty good.) 'I have the honor to
escort Mamercus Satronius Sabinus.'

"I had guessed that they were Vedians and I was sure of it when I said
that. The slaves scowled and the bailiff saluted very stiffly.

"Just after we turned into your road, I stopped the escort and told
Dromanus to take his horse. He had relieved me of his hat and poncho and I
had one hand on the litter, ready to climb in, when I heard hoofs behind
us on the road. I looked back. There was a rider on a beautiful bay mare
coming up at a smartish lope. Just as he came abreast of us she shied at
the litter and reared and began to prance about. I give you my word I
never had such a fright in my life. If you can imagine Commodus in an old
weather-beaten, broad-brimmed hat of soft, undyed felt and a mean, cheap,
shaggy poncho of undyed wool, and worse than the hat, that was the man on
the mare. He was left-handed, too."

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"By the way he handled his reins, of course," said Tanno.

"The mare was a magnificent beast, vicious as a fury, with a mouth as hard
as an eighty-pound tunny. He sat her like Castor himself. She pirouetted
back and forth across the road and my fellows scampered from under her
hoofs. The mare was such a beauty I could not take my eyes off her."

"Yes," I put in, "Ducconius has a splendid stud."

"Was he Ducconius?" Tanno exclaimed. "Your adversary in your old law-
suit?"

"His son Marcus, from your description," I amplified. "He is proprietor of
the property now. His father died last year."

"Well," Tanno went on. "You know that look Commodus has, like a healthy,
well-fed country proprietor with no education, no ideas and no thoughts
beyond crops and deer-hunting and boar-hunting, with a vacuous,
unintelligent stare? Well, that was just the way he looked."

"That is the way young Ducconius looks," I rejoined. "He ought to. You
have described exactly what he is."

"Does he know he looks like the Emperor?" Tanno asked, "and how does it
happen?"

"Pure coincidence," said I. "The family have been reared in these hills
for generations, none of them ever went to Rome. Reate is the end of the
world for them."

"Well," Tanno commented, "he might be Commodus' twin brother, by his
looks. He'll be a head shorter, in a hurry, if Commodus ever hears of him.
He is the duplicate of him. I stood in the road, staring after him, and
forgot to climb into the litter. When I woke up and climbed in, my lads
swung up your road at a great pace, and here I am. If I had had any sense
I'd have been here not much after noon. As it is I have wasted most of the
day."

When we went into the hot room, I asked him,

"Where did you get your new bearers? They look to me like Nemestronia's.
What have you done with your Saxons?"

"Nemestronia has them," he explained, "and my Nubians were hers. The dear
old lady took a fancy to my Saxons and teased and wheedled until I agreed
to exchange. Nobody ever can refuse anything to Nemestronia. I argued a
good deal. I told her that even if she is the youngest-looking old lady in
Rome it would never do in the world to set herself in contrast to such
blue eyes and pink skins and such yellow hair: that Nubians were much more
appropriate and that nothing could be more trying than Saxons, even for a
bride. She told me I mustn't make fun of her old age and decrepitude. She
said that the Saxons had such cheerful, bright faces and looked such
infantile giants that she really must have them. So I let her have her
way. The Nubians stand the heat better and the Saxons were almost too
showy."

Even while the attendant was thumping and kneading him on the slab, Tanno
went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I asked him about
the Emperor.

"As fretful as possible," he said. "The trouble with Commodus is that he
is growing tired of exhibiting himself as an athlete to invited audiences
in the Palace. He is perfectly frantic to show himself off in the Circus
or in the Amphitheatre. He oscillates between the determination to
disregard convention and to do as he likes and virtuous resolutions, when
he has been given a good talking-to by his old councillors and has made up
his mind to behave properly. He will break out yet into public exhibitions
of himself. He is really pathetically unhappy over his hard lot and
positively wails about the amount of his time which is taken up with State
business and about the pitifully small opportunity he has for training and
exercise."

My bath was broken off, sooner than I had intended, by the appearance of
one of the kitchen-boys, who asked for me so tragically and so urgently
and was so positive that no one else would suffice, that I went down into
the kitchen in a towering rage at being interrupted and wondering why on
earth I could be needed. I found Ofatulena, wife of the Villa-farm
bailiff, in violent altercation with my head-cook. He asserted that she
had no business in his kitchen and must get out. Her contention was that
she, as bailiff's wife, was above all slaves whatever, that she knew her
place and that when a distinguished stranger visited the Villa she would
show him what old-fashioned Sabine cooking was like, so she would. The
cook had had, through Agathemer, my directions for a formal dinner and he
declared that one more guest made no difference and that his dinner was
good enough for anybody. I compromised by telling him to continue as he
had planned, but to allow Ofatulena to prepare one dish for each course
and to add to each one of her own. I was rather pleased at her intrusion,
for there was no better cook in Sabinum, and anything old-fashioned was
sure to be a novelty to Tanno.

I found Tanno on the terrace, basking comfortably in the late sunshine and
gazing down the valley.

"What is that big hill away off to the East?" he asked.

"That is on the Aemilian property," I answered. "Villa Aemilia has a
direct outlet to the Via Valeria and the Aemilian Estate does not belong
to this neighborhood at all. It runs back to the Tolenus and mostly drains
and slopes that way. Huge as the Vedian estates are, and though the
Satronian estates are still huger, yet the Aemilian estates are so vast
that they are larger than both the Vedian and Satronian lands together.
The Aemilian land has much woodland along its western borders and blankets
and almost encloses the Vedian and Satronian estates and all of us in
between. The road you came up is a sort of detour east of the Salarian
way. The Satronians and Vedians and we in between all use it, turning to
the right towards Reate and to the left towards Rome."

Tanno blinked at the soft, hazy view and swept his arm southward.

"That is all Satronian over there?" he asked.

"All," I said, "as far as the Aemilian domain."

"Which way," he queried, "is Villa Vedia?"

"To see it from here," I said, "you would have to look straight through
this house and half a dozen hills. It is almost due north."

"Vedians to the northward," he continued, "Satronians to the southward,
and just you and Ducconius sandwiched in between, clapper-clawing each
other."

"No, quite otherwise!" I retorted. "My property does not touch Vedian or
Satronian land anywhere, and Ducconius has barely half a mile of boundary
line along the Satronian domain. There are six other estates, the largest
half as big as mine, the smallest not much bigger than the largest of my
tenant-farms; three are on one side of me and three on the other. You will
meet the proprietors at dinner, as I told you. They should be here now."

"Goggling country bumpkins?" he conjectured.

"Not a bit like that," I countered, "though you would scarcely call them
cultured. There is no art connoisseur among them. They care little for
books, but they are educated gentlemen and can talk of other subjects
besides vine-growing and cattle breeding. They have all been to Rome, the
Ducconians are the only stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud family in this
valley. You will find all your fellow-diners keenly interested in anything
you can tell them about the latest fashions and the latest gossip from
Rome. They think and talk of the doings of Rome's fast set much more than
you do."

"They have nothing to do with the feud?" he queried.

"Three of them," I explained, "are on the Vedian side, three on the
Satronian side, though they are always polite to each other. But it is a
frigid politeness and I was anticipating the dinner tonight as a frightful
trial. I fancy your presence will ensure its passing off comfortably.
Entedius Hirnio will be here, too. His estates are beyond Vediamnum and he
has never taken sides in the feud any more than Ducconius or my family."

"Do you ever see Ducconius?" he asked.

"Oh, never," said I, "we take care never to recognize each other, I
assure you. We cannot help meeting occasionally, but I never see him and
he never sees me. We meet mostly on the road. The lower part of this
valley-road where he overtook you is as much his right-of-way as mine, up
to where the road forks and is crossed by the Bran Brook. You can see the
bridge from here."

Tanno shaded his eyes with his hand.

"That is all his land over there, on the other side of the Bran Brook," I
continued. "Further up the valley the brook has three feeders. The Flour
rises back of my land on the Vedian estate. The Chaff brook is all mine
and the Bran rises in his woodlands."

"Will he appeal the case or reopen it now your uncle is dead?" Tanno
queried.

"There is no possibility of appeal," I said, "or of reopening. The case is
closed and I have won it forever. And all thanks to Agathemer. But for
Agathemer, Ducconius would have won the final hearing as he had won all
the intermediate appeals. His defeat after so many victories has
embittered him more than if we had won every time and he hates me worse
than ever.

"The only unpleasant feature for me is that the tenant of the farm so long
in dispute cannot be ousted. He was heart and soul with Ducconius all
through the period of the suit. His daughter is married to one of
Ducconius' tenants and his younger son has taken one of Ducconius' farms
since three of his tenant-families died off year before, last with the
plague. This makes old Chryseros Philargyrus by no means a pleasant tenant
for me."

"Old Love-Gold Love-Silver," Tanno commented, "is that a nickname or is it
really his name?"

"Really his name," I affirmed. "His mother was so extravagant and wasteful
that his father named him Chryseros Philargyrus as a sort of antidote
incantation, in the hope that it might prove a good omen of his
disposition and predispose him to parsimony. He certainly has turned out
sufficiently close-fisted to justify the choice."

"I don't understand your talk about tenantry," said Tanno. "Do you mean
you cannot change a bailiff on a farm which you have won incontestably on
final appeal in a suit at law?"

"He is no bailiff," I answered him. "He is a free man, just as much as you
or I. Sabinum is not like Latium or Etruria or Campania, where the free
tenantry has vanished, or like Bruttium or Spain, where there never was
any free tenantry. The free tenantry have survived in Sabinum more
completely than in any part of the world. I have only one bailiff here and
he manages only the villa-farm with a very moderate gang of slaves under
him. I do not own any more slaves on my estate. The slaves on the farms
are all owned by my tenants and there are eight farms besides the villa-
farm; counting Chryseros, there are nine tenant farmers. Each owns slaves
enough to work his farms. All the estates about here are managed in that
way: Aemilian, Vedian, Satronian, Entedian and all the rest, big or
little. We are rather proud of the system and very proud of our tenants."

"It must be a fine system," Tanno sneered. "I have been wondering what
kept you away from Rome. I suppose it has been the beautifully smooth and
marvellously easy working of your farm-tenant system."

"It works just as well as one slave-gang under one bailiff, if not
better," I retorted, hotly.

"Oh, yes," Tanno drawled, "it works just as well as one slave-gang under
one bailiff. That is why you have not had to inspect your estates in
Bruttium, why you have not visited Bruttium at all, why you have not so
much as thought of visiting Bruttium, whereas you have had to spend more
than two months here in these fascinating wilds. You can trust your
tenantry so completely that you only have to spend two months making sure
they are not idling or cheating you: you can trust your Bruttian bailiff
so poorly that you let him alone absolutely."

I was more than a little nettled by his ironical mood.

"I spent three months of the year out of the past four years in Bruttium,"
I argued. "I know every inch of the ranches perfectly. My uncle never
allowed me to become acquainted with anything up here. I was his
representative and factor in Bruttium. When I visited him here I was no
more than a guest and I have had to learn all the workings of the estate
from the beginning."

"Nonsense!" Tanno rejoined. "You know each when you see it. If the tenants
pay their rent on time, what do you need to know about how they run their
farms?"

"They pay cash and on time," I explained, "but the cash represents half
the yield and each manages the sale of his own produce. It is necessary
for the proprietor to understand the capacities of each farm."

"And you are proud of a tenantry," he sneered, "so honest that you cannot
trust them not to swindle you out of your just dues and on whom you have
to spy all the time to get what you should get from them."

"You do not understand," I declared.

"Right you are," said Tanno. "I do not and I do not want to."

"Just wait a moment and do not interrupt," I urged. "You do not
understand, there is no use in being a proprietor if you do not know more
than your tenantry. There are a thousand, there are ten thousand details
in which the management of the farms may be made more profitable or less
profitable, and all these details have to be watched and must be well in
the proprietor's mind."

"Could you not get some kind of overseeing general estate bailiff to do
all that for you?" he suggested.

"I can," I said, "and I'm going to get one. My uncle's overseer died of
the plague and my uncle was too old and too set in his ways to get
another, so he acted as his own overseer for the last four years of his
life. I must know of my own knowledge just how the place ought to be
managed or I can never detect and forestall unnecessary and ruinous
friction and trouble between my tenantry and any new superintending
overseer."

"I do not know," Tanno ruminated, "which to admire more, the beauties of
the Sabine tenant system or the wonders of the Sabine character. Any other
man I know would have stayed in Rome and attended strictly to his
courtship and let his estates take care of themselves. You are supposed to
be violently in love and you certainly behave like it: yet you leave Rome
and Vedia and shut yourself up among these damp cold hills and inspect and
reinspect and make a final inspection, and delay for one last peep and
linger for one final glance, where any other man would ignore the property
and be with the widow."

"I do not see anything extraordinary about it," I disclaimed. "A man needs
an income, a lover most of all."

"Income!" he snorted. "Isn't your income from your Bruttian estates ten
times the gross return from the property?"

"More than ten times," I admitted.

"Why worry about it at all then?" he demanded. "Isn't your Bruttian income
enough?"

"No income is enough," I declared, "if a man has a chance to get in more."

"Of course," he beamed, "you do not see anything extraordinary in your
petting this property. A Sabine would use up a year to get in a sesterce
from a frog pond. You are a Sabine. All Sabines worship the Almighty
Sesterce. But to anybody not a Sabine it is amazing to see a lover
postponing prayers to Lord Cupid until he has finished the last detail of
his ceremonial duties to Chief Cash, Greatest and Best."




CHAPTER II

A COUNTRY DINNER


Just then Tanno caught sight of a horseman approaching up the valley. I
looked where he pointed.

"That will be Entedius Hirnio," I said. "Of my dinner guests he lives
furthest away and so he always comes in first to any festivity."

"How far beyond Vediamnum does he live?" Tanno enquired.

"On the other side of the Vedian lands," I explained. "His property is
over the divide towards the Tolenus, in between Villa Vedia and Villa
Aemilia."

Entedius it was, as I made sure, when he drew nearer, by his magnificent
black mare. He covered the last hundred paces at a furious gallop, pulled
up his snorting mare abruptly, and dismounted jauntily. Plainly, at first
sight, he and Tanno liked each other. When I had introduced them they
looked each other up and down appraisingly, Entedius appearing to relish
Tanno's swarthy vigor, warm coloring and exuberant health as much as did
Tanno his hard-muscled leanness and weather-beaten complexion.

"Are you any relation to Entedia Jucunda?" Tanno queried.

"Very distant," Hirnio replied, "very distant indeed: too far for us to
call each other 'cousin.' When I am in Rome I always call on her; once in
a while she invites me to one of her very big dinners; otherwise we never
see each other."

Almost before they had exchanged greetings Mallius Vulso rounded the house
from the east and then Neponius Pomplio from the west; after he had been
presented, the two other Satronians, Bultius Seclator and Juventius Muso,
cantered up, followed closely by Fisevius Rusco and Lisius Naepor, both
adherents of the Vedian side of the feud.

As soon as the stable-boys had led off their horses we started bathwards,
delayed a moment by the arrival of a slave of Entedius, on a mule, leading
another heavily laden with two packs. We made a quick bath, with no
loitering, and at once went in to dinner. My uncle had been to the last
degree conservative and old-fashioned. He would have nothing to do with
any new inventions, save his own. So he would not hear of any alterations
in the furnishings of his villa, except those suggested by his ideas of
sanitation. Otherwise it had been kept just as my grandfather had left it
to him. In particular uncle could not be brought to like the newly popular
C-shaped dining sofas, which all Rome and all fashionables all over Italy
and the provinces had so acclaimed and so promptly adopted along with
circular-topped dining-tables. My _triclinium_ still held grandfather's
square-topped table and the three square sofas about it. Uncle's will, in
fact, had stipulated that no furnishings of the villa must be altered
within five years of the date of his death. As I had to adjust my formal
dinners to the old style, I was not only delighted to have Tanno with us
for himself and for his jollity, but also because he just made up the nine
diners demanded by ancient convention.

Agathemer had asked me, as a special favor, to leave the decoration of the
_triclinium_ entirely to him, and I had agreed, when he fairly begged me,
not to enter the _triclinium_ or even pass its door, after my noonday
siesta. When I did enter it with my guests I was dazzled. The sun had just
set and the northwestern sky was all a blaze of golden brightness,
streaked with long pink and rosy streamers of cloud, from which the
evening light, neither glaring nor dim, flooded through the big
northwestern windows. The spacious room was a bower of bloom. Great
armfuls of flowers hid the capitals of the pilasters, others their bases;
garlands--heavy, even corpulent garlands--were looped from pilaster to
pilaster; every vase was filled with flowers, the little vases on the
brackets, the big ones alternating with the statues in the niches, the
huge floor-vases in the corners: the table, the sofas, the floor, all were
strewn with smaller blossoms, tiny flowers or fresh petals of roses. The
garlands for our heads, which were offered us heaped on a tray, were to
the last degree exquisite. I adjusted mine as if in a dream. I was dazed.
I knew that the flowers could not have been supplied by our gardens; I
could not conjecture whence they came.

Agathemer, bowing and grinning, stood in the inner doorway. My eyes
questioned his.

"I have a note here," he said, "which I was enjoined not to hand you until
you had lain down to dinner."

The two second assistant waiter boys took our shoes and we disposed
ourselves on the sofas, Tanno in the place of honor, I rejoicing again
that his presence had solved, acceptably to all the rest, the otherwise
insoluble problem of to whom I should accord that location.

Agathemer handed me the note. At sight of it I recognized the handwriting
of Vedius Caspo. Of course, like my uncle before me, I always invited to
any of my formal entertainments all my neighbors except Ducconius Furfur,
our enemy, and the only neighbor with whom we were not on good terms.
Equally, of course, Vedius Caspo at Villa Vedia and Satronius Dromo at
Villa Satronia, regularly found some transparent pretext for declining my
invitation, each fearing that, if he accepted, the other might by some
prank of the gods of chance accept also, and they might encounter each
other.

The thread was too strong for me to break. I tore it out of the seal, and,
asking my guests' indulgence, I opened the note. It read:

    "Vedius Caspo to his good friend Andivius Hedulio. If you are well I
    am well also. I was writing at Villa Vedia on the day before the Nones
    of June. I had written you some days before and explained my inability
    to avail myself of your kind invitation to dinner on the Nones. I
    purposed sending you, with this, what flowers my gardens afford
    towards decorating your _triclinium_ for your feast. I beg that
    you accept these as a token of my good will. When you reach Rome I beg
    that, at your leisure and convenience, you transmit my best wishes to
    my kinswoman, Vedia Venusta.

    "Farewell."

This note staggered me more than the sight of the flowers. It was amazing
that Vedius should have taken the trouble to be so gracious to me; that
he should go out of his way to write me the vague and veiled, but
unequivocal intimation of his approval of my suit for Vedia implied in the
last sentences of his letter was astounding. Vedia had a very large
property inherited from her father, from two aunts and from others of the
Vedian clan. The whole clan was certain to be very jealous of her choice
of a second husband. I had anticipated their united opposition to my suit.
To be assured of his approbation by the beloved brother of the head of the
clan made me certain that I should meet with no opposition at all.

My delight must have irradiated my face. Tanno, the irresistible, at once
urged me to read the note aloud, saying:

"Don't be a hog. Don't keep all those good things to yourself. Let us have
a share of the tid-bits. Read it out to all of us."

I yielded.

Of course the three Satronians looked sour. But Tanno knew how to smooth
out any embarrassing situation. He beamed at me and fairly bubbled with
glee.

"I bet on you," he said. "The widow will be yours at this rate. But don't
show her that note till you two are married."

Before anybody else could speak he went on:

"I'm famished. So are we all. Flowers are fine to look at and to smell,
but give me food. Let's get at our dinner."

We did. We fell upon the relishes, disposing of them with hardly the
interchange of a word.

When the boys cleared the table I observed with some pride that Tanno eyed
with an expression of approval the table cloth and the big silver tray
which they set on it, laden with the second course.

"You are," he said, "pretty well equipped for house-keeping in these
remote wilds, Caius. Your table-cloth is far above the average for town
tables and your tray is magnificent."

That started a round of talk on city usages, town etiquette and court
gossip. Tanno, very naturally, did much of the talking, the rest mostly
questioning and listening. He spoke at length of the Emperor, but of
course more guardedly than while talking to me alone.

When the tray with the first course was removed and while that with the
second course was being brought in the talk ebbed. Tanno gave it a turn,
which at first seemed likely to prove unfortunate, by saying:

"Now I've told you the latest news from Rome and the current gossip and
the popular fads. Turn about is fair play. It is time for some of you to
tell me what just now most interests this country-side. My idea of country
life is that it is about as exciting as the winter sleep of a dormouse or
of a hibernating bear; but for all I know, it may be as lively in its way
as life in town; you may be agog over some occurrence as important to you
as a change of Palace Prefects would be at Rome. Speak out somebody, if
there is anything worth telling."

"Whether it be worth telling I do not know," spoke up Bultius Seclator,
"but the country-side hereabouts is agog just now over a recent case of
abduction."

(I shuddered: here was the feud to the fore in spite of everything. And I
shuddered yet more as I saw set and harden the features of Vulso, Rusco
and Naepor.)

"To make clear to you," he went on, "I'll have to explain the
circumstances. You undoubtedly know both Satronius Dromo of this valley
and his father, Satronius Satro, at Rome. Satro's father, old Satronius
Satronianus, among the horde of slaves set free by his will, liberated a
number of artisans of various kinds, who, scattered about among the
neighboring towns and villages, had lived like free men, in dwellings
belonging to him or in rented abodes, plying their trades and returning to
their master a better income than he could have derived from their
activities in any other way, since one of his assistant overseers saw to
it that they paid in, unfailingly and promptly, the stipulated percentage
of their gains. Among these was a cobbler named Turpio, at Trebula. He was
so expert, so deft, so quick and so ingratiating to customers, that the
overseer insisted on his paying a percentage of his earnings larger than
that paid by any other similar slave. Now cobbling, at the best of it, is
not an occupation at which one would fancy that anyone would become
wealthy. Yet Turpio grew to be very well off. He early amassed savings
enough to pay for his own freedom, but his master would not agree to that,
so Turpio bought the house in which he lived and his workshop. In the
course of time he accumulated possessions of no mean value and owned
several slaves, whom he employed as assistant cobblers. By his master's
will all that he had amassed became his property, of course, when he was
freed. He was, as he is, very popular in Trebula and among all the
country-folk round about who visit Trebula. He is esteemed by all who know
him and by all Satronians of every degree.

"Now Turpio, some years ago, partly on account of his kind-heartedness,
partly since he could never resist a bargain and he got her for almost
nothing, partly, perhaps because of his canny foresight, bought a
wretched, puny, sickly, little runt of a four-year-old slave-girl, a mere
rack of bones covered with yellow skin. She continued sickly for some
years, then, when she was more than half grown, the fresh air of Trebula,
its good water, the kindness with which she was treated, the generous fare
accorded her, all working together, suddenly began to show results. She
plumped out, grew tall, vigorous, active, graceful and charming. She also
acquired notable skill at weaving. His intimates congratulated Turpio on
his luck or prescience and foretold for him notable profits from her sale.
Turpio averred that he and his spouse were so fond of the girl that he was
unwilling to part with her except to a master or mistress whom she took to
and who seemed likely to be kind to her. He refused several handsome
offers for her. She became notable in Trebula as its most beautiful
inhabitant and all who knew her wished her well.

"Not long ago, Vedius Molo of Concordia, not a bad specimen of a noble
lad, I will say, came to Villa Vedia. He roamed about the country as a
young nobleman will. By some chance he caught sight of Xantha, for that is
her name, and, of course, like many another, fell in love with her. He
promptly offered to buy her. But Xantha did not like him at all and
Turpio, as always, consulted her before deciding to sell her. Opposition
inflamed Molo and he bid Turpio up till his business instincts all but
overcame his doting affection for Xantha. But Xantha liked Molo less and
less the more she saw of him. She begged Turpio not to sell her to Molo.
He was obdurate, although Molo bid on up till he was offering a really
fabulous price, though one well within his means. He could not credit that
Turpio would not yield. When he was convinced that he could not wheedle
him he lost his temper. Turpio told him that the negotiations were at an
end and warned him not to return. Molo went off in a rage.

"Two nights later Turpio's house was broken into by a considerable body of
men, armed, certainly with clubs or staffs. Turpio and his household
defended themselves vigorously and were all severely mishandled in the
affray, Turpio most severely of all. They were overcome, even overwhelmed,
and, before their neighbors could come to their assistance or the townsmen
in general rally to help, Xantha was carried off by the intruders, who,
beating the night watchman insensible, escaped through the postern of the
north gate.

"This highhanded outrage has greatly incensed all Trebula and the entire
neighborhood. The night was very dark, neither Turpio nor any of his
household nor yet the watchman at the postern claims to have recognized
any of the abductors. Yet all impute the outrage to Vedius Molo. Every
magistrate is alert to punish the delinquents and to return Xantha to her
master. Yet she has totally vanished. After they passed the postern her
abductors left no trace. Whether they had or had not with them a two-
wheeled or a four-wheeled carriage or a litter or a sedan-chair cannot be
determined; nor whether they were on foot or on horseback. The weather was
dry and windy and the rocky roads out of Trebula showed no tracks of any
kind. The country has been scoured in every direction and all persons
questioned, not only at the change-stations on the main roads, and at
crossroads, but at all villages. Not a clue has been found; though all
Turpio's friends more than suspect Vedius Molo, there is not an iota of
evidence on which anyone could base a demand for a warrant to search Villa
Vedia or any other specified villa, farmstead or other piece of property.
Xantha has vanished. There are rumors that she is at Villa Vedia, but they
seem as baseless as the rumor of a party of horsemen conveying a closed
litter, which rumor has radiated from uncountable localities all about
here, not one of which localities could, when their inhabitants were
questioned, substantiate the rumor in any way. Equally baseless appear the
numerous rumors that this or that individual has it on unimpeachable
authority that Xantha's abductors are camped somewhere in this or that
woodland and are preparing to smuggle Xantha into Villa Vedia by that
route which they deem least probable for such a venture and therefore
least watched. With all this the country-side is agog, I can assure you."

"Fairly exciting, I admit," Tanno remarked when Bultius paused. "Sounds
like the tales of goings-on in Latium in the days when the Aequi, Volsci
and Hernici raided up to the gates of Rome four summers out of five. I had
not thought Sabinum so primitive."

Before I could speak, Fisevius Rusco cut in.

"Bultius," he said, "Vulso and Naepor and I have listened without any
interruptions to your version of the occurrences you have narrated, and I
must say you have told them as fairly as could be expected from any one
with your leanings. I have no remarks to make on your story nor anything
to say in rebuttal. But it seems to me, it is now your turn, along with
Nepronius and Juventius, to listen with equal patience, while I narrate a
similar story."

The three Satronians bowed stiffly and in silence.

Rusco resumed, addressing Tanno:

"I shall not," he said, "be compelled to go into details as minutely as
did Bultius. You can comprehend my story with less background.

"At Reate, for some years past, there lived a worthy couple, freedman and
freedwoman of Vedius Vindex. The husband died more than a year ago,
leaving a young and childless widow, named Greia Posis, possessed of a
good town-house and of three small farms not far out in the country.
Naturally as she was comely and well-off, Greia soon had suitors aplenty.
For some time she showed no favor to any, but lately it has been plain
that she would marry either Helvidius Flaccus, a tenant-farmer holding his
land under one of the Vedian clan near Reate, or Annius Largus, similarly
a tenant of one of the Satronian properties. Although Helvidius was on
Greia's side of our local feud, while Annius was on the other, idlers at
Reate were laying wagers that Annius would win Greia, considering him most
in her favor.

"Recently, however, Greia had some sort of a quarrel with Annius, and
announced her intention of marrying Helvidius.

"You must understand that Greia has the best sort of reputation, is
universally respected, and is greatly liked by all her neighbors and
acquaintances and is popular in Reate.

"Now, a day or two after the abduction which Bultius has narrated, Greia
had visited one of her farms and, towards dark, was returning home to
Reate in a two-wheeled gig driven by a slave of hers, a deaf-mute lad.
What occurred can only be conjectured, as the deaf-mute cannot relate it,
but, at all events, he was found insensible, bruised and bleeding, by the
road, apparently having been unmercifully beaten. Not far from him the
mule was grazing by the roadside, his harness in perfect condition and the
gig unharmed. Greia, however, had vanished. No one had seen Annius in the
neighborhood, yet it is generally assumed that he managed to abduct Greia
in broad daylight without any one sighting him either coming or going:
which, if the fact, would be an almost miraculous feat.

"Certainly Greia has disappeared. The magistrates of Reate searched
Annius' farmstead, but found neither Greia nor, indeed, any trace of
Annius himself. It is conjectured that he is hiding, with Greia, at some
farm or villa under the Satronian protection. But there is no shadow of
any tangible basis for the conjecture, nor for the rumors, which, like
those concerning Xantha which Bultius had told you of, run all over the
country-side; very similar rumors, too; for some are to the effect that
Annius is holding Greia in durance at Villa Satronia; others that a
cortege of horsemen escorting a closed litter has been seen here or there
on some road; others that someone has learnt that Annius is about to
attempt to reach Villa Satronia with Greia, convoyed by an escort of his
clansmen. The country-side buzzes with such whispers.

"And let me point out to you, what you undoubtedly comprehend, that
serious as is the forcible abduction of a slave-girl, the abduction of a
freewoman, even if a freedwoman, is a far more serious matter. Not only is
Helvidius on fire to reclaim his bride and to revenge himself on Largus,
not only are all his relations, friends and well-wishers eager to assist
him by every means in their power, not only are all right-thinking men
incensed at the outrage, but the magistrates of Reate are determined to
bring the guilty man to justice and to free Greia."

Pomplio paused.

"Very well told," was Tanno's comment, "and I comprehend far better than
you perhaps imagine. Not only are the magistrates of Reate hot on the
trail of Annius and those of Trebula equally keen after Vedius Molo, but
all Vedians are eager to shield Molo and to help catch and convict Annius
Largus, and all Satronians conversely doing all they can to shield Largus
and get Molo. Oh, I twig! Moreover I realize that all Vedians regard the
abduction of Greia as not so much a hot-headed folly of Largus as a
Satronian retort to the abduction of Xantha; and conversely, all
Satronians regard it as merely an insufficient counter to Xantha's
abduction. Oh, I comprehend the feud atmosphere. I have no doubt that
scores of poniards of the Vedian clan are sharp and daily sharpened
sharper, for use on Largus and as many Satronian dirks for use on Molo;
that every road hereabouts has watchers posted along it; that bands of
lusty lads are camped here and there waiting summonses or are actually in
likely ambushes by the roadsides. I foresee shindies of great amplitude.
You need not say any more; neither of you need say any more; none of you
need say any more. In fact, I beg that the whole subject be dropped right
here. I comprehend the feud atmosphere and I don't want any more of it in
this _triclinium_. Let's forget or ignore the feud and enjoy Hedulio's
good fare."

His compelling personality exerted its magic, as usual. All six feudists
relaxed. I could feel the social tension dissolve. We all felt relieved.

By that time we had disposed of the fish and roasts, the boys had lighted
the hanging lamps and the standing lamps, had removed the tray with what
we had left of the roasts and had brought in the third-course tray with
the birds and salads. As we sampled them Tanno remarked:

"You have a cook, astonishingly good, Caius, for anywhere outside of Rome
and amazingly good for a villa in the hills, far from a town. I must see
your cook and question him. His roasts, his broiled, baked and fried
dishes are above the averages, yet nothing wonderful. But his ragouts or
fricassees or whatever you call them, are marvellous. This salmi of fig-
peckers (or of some similar bird, for it is so ingeniously flavored and
spiced, that I cannot be sure) is miraculous. There was a sort of chowder,
too, of what fish I could not conjecture, which was so appetizing that I
could have gorged on it. Just as provocative and alluring was one of the
concoctions of the second course, apparently of lamb or kid, but
indubitably a masterpiece. I certainly must see your cook."

"My cook," I confessed, "was not the artist of the dishes you praise so
highly. Hereabouts we do not give them such high-sounding names as you
apply to them, we call them hashes or stews. Ofatulena, the wife of my
villa-farm bailiff, devised them and prepared them. She is famous
hereabouts for her cooking."

"What," cried Tanno, "a woman cook! Never saw a woman cook, never heard of
one, never read of one. Egypt, Babylonia, Lydia, Persia, Greece and Italy,
all cooks have always been men. I ought to know all about cookery, what
with my library on cookery and my travels to all the cities famous for
cookery. But you have taught me something novel and wholly unsuspected.
Trot out your female cook. Let's have a look at her."

I sent for Ofatulena and she came in, pleased and embarrassed, flushed
brick-red all over her full moon of a face, diffident and elated,
trembling and giggling.

Tanno questioned her and satisfied himself that she had prepared the
dishes which had won his approbation and also that she was no hit-or-miss
cook, but a real artist in the kitchen, and really knew what she was
doing.

"Beware, Hedulio," he said as he dismissed her. "You Sabines will have
three abductions to gossip over if you do not look out. I'm half tempted
now to suborn some of the riff-raff of the Subura to kidnap this miracle-
worker of yours and hale her to Rome into my kitchen to amaze my guests."

When she was gone he resumed:

"Everything is topsy turvy in Sabinum, woman cooks and tenant farmers!
What next? I gather that all of you, Satronians, Vedians and outsiders,
have your estates parcelled out among free tenant farmers. Am I right?"

Hirnio, Seclator and the rest assured him that he was right.

"Well, then," he said, "tenant farming must be a subject perfectly safe
for all persons present. Let's talk about it. Hedulio has tried to expound
to me the beauties of the system, but he had no great success. I fail so
far, to comprehend how the institution ever came into existence, why it
has maintained itself only in Sabinum and what are its advantages. Tell me
about it."

Tanno had hit upon one of the few subjects on which all present felt
concordantly. His utterance started a hubbub, all my guests talking at
once, each trying to out-talk all the others and all voicing our local
enthusiasm for our local farm-system. The _triclinium_ rang with paeans of
praise of our Sabine yeomanry, and when the excitement had abated enough
to permit of intelligible discourse, Tanno was regaled with a series of
tales illustrating the sterling worth of the Sabine yeomen, their
knowledge of farming, their diligence, their patience, their unflagging
energy, their parsimony, their amazing productivity in respect to crop-
yield, stock, implements and all things raised or made on their farms,
their devotion to their landlords, the charm of the ties between the
gentry and the yeomanry and the universal Sabine cult of the tenant
system.

With all this talk we lingered longer than usual over Ofatulena's
bewitching salads, which Tanno lauded even above her ragouts.

When it was time for the last course, after the service-boys had slid the
third-course tray off the table, I was amazed to see my four strongest
table slaves enter fairly staggering under the load put upon them by
Grandfather's biggest dinner-tray heaped with fruit, among which I
descried African pomegranates and other exotics. Still more was I amazed
when other slaves crowded in behind them, carrying baskets of hot-house
melons of astonishing size and insistent perfume. Last of the procession
was Agathemer, who stood in the doorway, grinning and beaming.

Tanno, not less than the guests in chorus, acclaimed this unexpected
profusion.

Again I looked interrogatively at Agathemer. He responded as at the
commencement of our meal.

"I have a note here," he said, "which I was enjoined not to hand you until
after this fruit had been set upon your table."

He handed me the missive, the superscription of which was, to my
astonishment, in the handwriting of Satronius Dromo. While my fingers
tugged at the thread, Tanno commanded:

"Read it out loud at once, like the other. No secrets here. Let us all
in."

The letter began with all the traditional polite formalities, as had that
from Vedius. It read:

    "Satronius Dromo to his valued friend Andivius Hedulio. If you are
    well I am well also. I was writing at Villa Satronia on the day before
    the Nones of June. Some days before I had written you expressing my
    regret at the circumstances which prevented me from accepting your
    most welcome invitation to dine with you on the Nones. I intended
    dispatching to you, with this, what fruit my establishment has fit for
    your acceptance, which I ask of you, this fruit being sent as an
    earnest of my cordiality. When you are settled at Rome I beg that,
    when perfectly convenient to you, you convey my warmest regards to my
    cousin's widow, Vedia Venusta.

    "Farewell."

At this letter I was fairly thunderstruck. That Satronius should take any
notice of me at all was more amazing than the graciousness of Vedius. That
he should have ransacked the provinces and overstrained the capabilities
of rowers and horseflesh to send me costly rarities out of season was
astounding. That his last sentence should practically duplicate the last
sentence of the letter from Vedius was most incredible of all. For if all
Vedians were sure to be very decidedly hypercritical as to anyone likely
to become Vedia's second husband, it was still more a certainty that the
entire Satronian connection would scrutinize minutely everything
concerning any man likely to come into control of the great properties
which she had inherited from her husband, Satronius Patavinus. That I
should be disfavored by the entire Satronian connection had seemed to me
more than likely. Dromo's intimation of his warm approval of my suit for
Vedia, coming on top of Caspo's, cleared of all obstacles my path towards
matrimony with the woman of my heart's choice. I was more than elated, I
was drunk with ecstacy.

After I had finished reading, dead silence reigned in the _triclinium_;
even Tanno was too dumbfounded to utter any sound.

Hirnio spoke first.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I beg of you to hear me out with attention. Like
our Caius here and like his hereditary antagonist, Ducconius Furfur, I
have never taken sides in our age-long local feud. Like all outsiders and
like a majority of its partisans, I have grieved at its existence,
deplored its unfortunate results and hoped for its extinction. I think I
may say with truth that there was not one inhabitant of this neighborhood
who did not rejoice when the heads of the two families, with the abolition
of the feud and the creation of the permanent amity in view, arranged a
marriage between the lovely daughter of the head of the northern branch
of the Vedian House and the son of the northern branch of the Satronian
House. Satronian or Vedian; freeman or slave, everyone was delighted at
the prospect of lasting harmony. The sudden death of Satronius Patavinus
not only blasted these hopes, but intensified antagonisms; for all the
Vedians felt that a daughter of the clan had been sacrificed in vain and
all Satronians regretted that vast properties about Padua, long possessed
by Satronians, passed by the will of her husband to a young widow, born of
the Vedian House. All saw the prospect of exacerbated enmities and their
probable results.

"Now it must be apparent to you that the two letters which we have heard
read would never have been written without their writers having consulted
with the heads of their respective houses. These letters are an intimation
to our Caius that both her kinsmen and the kinsmen of her first husband
smile upon his suit for the most lovely, the most charming and the
wealthiest widow in Rome. This means, to a certainty, that both Satronius
Satro and Vedius Vedianus descry the possibility that Vedia's union with a
second husband acceptable to both clans and opposed to neither may work
for mitigation of the feud spirit and for establishment of harmonious
amity almost as powerfully as would have the permanency of her membership
of the Satronian clan. I conceive that all of us, outsiders and partisans,
may congratulate Caius without reservation or afterthought, heartily and
enthusiastically."

To this all present agreed in chorus, all drank my health.

Vulso, rather hesitatingly, spoke next.

"As all we say here," he began, "is under the rose and will not be
repeated or hinted at, I do not mind saying that I feel as does Hirnio."

To this Rusco and Naepor agreed, with less hesitancy.

Similarly the three Satronians expressed their concurrence.

Again they all congratulated me on my luck, drank to the success of my
suit, and to my prosperity and health.

Complete harmony reigned and the strained social atmosphere attending a
dinner in the feud area vanished completely.

By this time the moon, which was nearly full, was high enough to bathe the
world with silvery light. Tanno peering across the table and through the
windows, remarked:

"You have a fine prospect, Caius. I admired it when I first lay down, but
our interest in the flowers and in your letter from Vedius diverted my
intention to speak of it. It is a charming outlook even by moonlight."

"Yes," I admitted, with not a little pride. "Grandfather, of course, dined
earlier than is fashionable nowadays. He built this _triclinium_ so that
he could bask in the rays of the declining sun and could watch the sunset
colors as they varied and deepened. My uncle used to dine as early as his
father and, even in the hottest weather, enjoyed the direct rays of the
sun on him as he dined, for he was always rheumatic and chilly, yet he
enjoyed the beauty of the view even more."

"It is charming even by moonlight," Tanno repeated, "and that although the
villa is between our outlook and the moon, so its shadow darkens the
nearer prospect."

We all contemplated the view through the window. "Who are those men I see
just beyond the shadow of the house?" Tanno queried. "Quite an assemblage,
it seems to me; almost a mob for these lonely districts."

I looked where he indicated and could not conjecture what it was that I
saw.




CHAPTER III

TENANTRY AND SLAVERY


Agathemer came in and explained that my tenants had a petition to present
to me and had gathered, hoping that I would receive them after dinner.
(Doubtless, I thought, conjecturing that I would be, just after dinner, in
the most accommodating humor possible.)

"I must see this and hear what they have to say," Tanno declared. "Have
you any objections to our going with you, Caius?" he asked.

On my saying that I should be glad to have him come along, he said:

"Come on, all of you, it will be fun, and standing out in the night cool
will freshen our zest for our wine."

All nine of us went out on the terrace. The prospect was indeed beautiful,
only the brighter stars showing in the pale sky, the far hills outlined
against it, the nearer hills darkly glimmering in the moon-rays, the
valleys all full of pearly moonlit haze, the pleasance about the villa
vague in the witchery of the moon's full radiance.

In that full radiance, on the path below the balustrade of the terrace,
were my nine tenant farmers. Not one, as was natural among our healthy
hills, but was my elder. Yet, according to our customary mode of address
from master to tenant, I said to them:

"What brings you here, lads, so long after your habitual bed-time?"

Ligo Atrior acted as spokesman.

"We have a request to prefer," he said, "and we judged this an opportune
time."

"Speak out," I said, "our wine is waiting for me and my guests, and I am
listening. Speak out!"

He set forth, at considerable length and with many halts and repetitions,
that all their farms were in excellent order and in an exceedingly forward
condition, promising very well for the future in all respects; that I had
just assured myself of all this by a minute inspection; that they were
keenly emulous of each other and each thought his farm the best of the
nine; that they were and had been very curious to learn which of the nine
farms I thought the best kept; that someone had suggested that, if I
judged any one of the nine distinctly better than his fellows', it would
be proper to distinguish the man of my choice by some gift, bonus,
exemption or privilege, if his farm was really the best kept; that while
discussing these matters someone had remarked that he envied me my
approaching visit to Rome, as he had never been there; that this had
brought to their notice that not one of them had ever seen Rome, though it
was less than three days' journey away; that someone had suggested that
perhaps I might be induced not only to specify which of them I considered
the best farmer, but to indicate my preference by allowing the best of
them to visit Rome later in the summer, after the crops were all
harvested; that they had agreed to abide loyally by my choice and that
they prayed me to declare which of them, in my opinion, was the best
farmer.

When Ligo paused, old Chryseros Philargyrus, his wiry leanness manifest
even in the moonlight, although he was well muffled up against the
dampness of the night, pushed himself to the front and said that he
claimed that, in any such competition, he ought to stand on a level with
my eight other tenants, even if they had been life-long tenants of the
estate, whereas he, like his father and grandfather, had paid rent to
Ducconius Furfur. He claimed that the court decision by which Ducconius
had had to refund to my uncle all the rents received from the farm in
dispute since the first decision of the lowest court had awarded it to a
Ducconius had been, in effect, an affirmation that his ancestors and he
had always been, constructively, tenants of the Andivian estate.

The old man spoke well and tersely, made his points neatly and stated his
arguments lucidly, and, in conclusion he said:

"And you must realize, Sir, that whatever my feelings have been up to
today, after what happened this afternoon I have forgotten that I or mine
ever owned Ducconius Furfur as master. I am your man henceforward, body
and soul; I call you not only patron but savior and father. I make my plea
for treatment putting me on full equality with my fellows, and I value
myself so highly that I hope for the prize. Yet if I am not the lucky man,
I shall loyally and in silence abide by your decision."

I was pleased with his words and I admitted the correctness of his
contentions, but rebuked him for his self-assertive manner.

Then Ligo spoke again.

"Please publish your opinion, Master, for we are sleepy and long to be
abed. But much more do we long for your decision, for each one of us
considers himself a better farmer than any other and expects to be the
chosen man."

I smiled.

"Suppose," I said, "that I am of the opinion that no one of you is better
than all his fellows, but that two of you are better than the other seven,
but equal to each other in merit?"

Ligo stood at loss, but old Chryseros spoke out at once, saying:

"In that case, Master, it would be proper that both men go to Rome, as
such a prize could not be divided into shares."

His forwardness angered me. I told him sharply to mind his manners and to
keep his place; that Ligo had been chosen spokesman and that he was to
hold his peace. I also pointed out that I had not agreed to give any such
prize for distinguished excellence, that far less had I agreed that a
visit to Rome should be the prize.

All nine of them stood mute.

I was tingling with my elation over my prospects of winning Vedia, for I
felt sure of her personal favor, and the two notes from my great neighbors
had thrown me into a sort of trance of rapture. I was genuinely pleased
with the frugality, diligence and skill of my tenants. My estate was in a
way to return far more than I had expected of it. I was in a position to
be liberal, I felt indulgent.

"Lads," I cried, "everyone of the nine of you is as good a farmer as
everyone of the other eight. You are the nine best farmers in Sabinum. You
are such good farmers that you have put your farms in a state where your
bailiffs can oversee the harvest as well as if under your own eyes.
Everyone of you has earned a visit to Rome and everyone of you shall have
it, and not at some future time, which may never come, but now. I start
for Rome at daybreak and the whole nine of you shall go with me!"

This unexpected liberality they heard in silence: they stood dumb and
motionless.

All but Philargyrus. Gesticulating, he pressed forward among them from
where he had retired to the rear after my late rebuke. Gesticulating, his
voice rising into a senile scream, he upbraided me for folly,
extravagance, unthrift and prodigality. He declared that such indulgence
would ruin me, would debauch him and his fellows and would, by its evil
example, infect, corrupt and deprave the whole countryside. He railed at
me. He vowed that, whatever the rest might do, he would use all his powers
of persuasion to urge them to stick to their farms till harvest was over
and he swore that he himself would, under no circumstances, leave his till
the last ear of grain, the last root, the last fruit, was garnered, stored
and safe for the winter.

I let him shriek himself hoarse and talk himself mute; then I spoke calmly
and sternly:

"I am master here and master of all of you. The loyalty due from a free
tenant is, in Sabinum, as mandatory a bond as the obedience legally due
from a slave. I speak. Listen, all of you. I set out for Rome at dawn. See
that every man of the nine of you is on horseback at the east courtyard
gate at dawn, with an ample pack of all things needed for a month's
absence properly girthed on a led mule. If any of you dare to disobey I
shall find some effective means to make him smart for his temerity."

Ligo, finding his voice, thanked me for the nine, and they trudged away.

When we were back again on the dining-sofas Tanno, as was his habit, took
charge of things after his breezy fashion.

"With the permission of our Caius," he said, without asking my permission,
of which he was sure, "I appoint myself King of the Revels. Where's the
head butler?"

When my major-domo came forward, Tanno queried:

"How much water did you mix with the wine we've been drinking with our
dinner?"

The butler replied:

"Two measures of water to one of wine."

Tanno nodded to me, smiling.

"You've mighty good wine, Caius," he said. "No one is more an expert than
I and I should have conjectured three to two."

"Lads," he continued, to the guests collectively, "this is the sort of
master-of-the-revels I am. I mean to start for Rome at dawn with Caius and
I intend that both of us shall start cold sober. Therefore all of us must
go to bed reasonably sober. You must submit to my rulings."

Then he instructed the butler:

"Give us no more of the mixture we have been drinking. Mix a big bowl
three to one and ladle that out to us."

When our goblets had been filled he spoke to me!

"Caius, I want to know what that old hunks of a Chryseros Philargyrus
meant when he said that after what had occurred this afternoon he was your
man, body and soul. What happened?"

"Nothing much." I said. "As Agathemer and I were riding home and were
passing his barn-yard gate, we heard yells for help. I dismounted and ran
in. I found Chryseros rather at a disadvantage in handling a bull. I
helped him get the beast into his pen. His gratitude seems exaggerated."

"Not any more exaggerated than your modesty," spoke up Neponius Pomplio,
who had hardly uttered a word since he arrived. Turning to Tanno he
continued:

"You'll never get Hedulio to tell you anything more definite than the very
vague and hazy adumbration of his exploit he has already given. I heard
some rumors of his feat as I rode down here from my house. I conjecture
that the story is worth telling, to its least detail. If you want to hear
what really occurred, call in Agathemer; he was with Hedulio when it
happened."

"Good idea," said Tanno, "and I want Agathemer here for another reason.
May I call him in, Caius?"

I assented and Agathemer came in, as smiling and obsequious as always.

"Agathemer," Tanno queried, "have you finished your dinner?"

"Long ago," said Agathemer, "and plenty too."

"Then, have a chair," said Tanno, rolling himself luxuriously on the deep,
soft mattress of one of my uncle's superlatively comfortable sofas. "No!"
he said sharply. "No demurring. Sit down, man! Do as I tell you! I've a
batch of questions to put to you and you'll be long answering me. I want
you entirely at ease while you talk. You can't talk as I want you to
unless you forget everything else. If you stand you'll be thinking of your
tired legs instead of talking without thinking at all."

Agathemer, embarrassed, seated himself in the lowest and simplest chair in
the room.

"We called you in for something else," said Tanno, "but first of all I
want to ask you why you were not with us at dinner? Caius has written me
again and again how he and you dine together evening after evening and how
you are so entertaining that he enjoys a dinner just with you almost as
much as if he has novel guests. Why were you left out of this? Is Hedulio
shy of more or less than nine at table, like his uncle, or does his
uncle's dining-room outfit coerce him? Or what _was_ the reason?"

Agathemer turned red and visibly writhed, mute and sweating.

I cut in.

"Here, Caius," I said to Tanno, "this isn't the torture chamber nor you
the executioner, nor yet has Agathemer deserved the rack. You are putting
him in an excruciating dilemma. He is too courteous to tell you that you
ought to ask me, not him, and he is too loyal to tell you the reason."

I was nearer to being angry with Tanno than I had ever been in our lives.
I comprehended why he, with all his superlative equipment of tact and
intuition, had blundered; he could not but assume that circumstances were
as they should have been rather than as they were; yet the blunder was, in
a sense, unforgivable, and had created a social situation than which
nothing could be more awkward.

Agathemer's face cleared as I spoke.

Tanno rounded on me.

"You tell me, then!" he said. "I guess from their faces that I have
advertised my ignorance of what is perfectly well known to everybody else
here. Remove my disabilities."

I hesitated and then went in with a rush.

"It does not matter a particle," I said, "how often I lie down to dinner
with Agathemer when we are alone. Since I am then the only freeman in the
villa there are no witnesses of our dining together. But if I have him to
dinner with any guest he becomes thereby a freeman, as you very well know.
And if I were free to set him free and chose to free him in that fashion,
I should have to advise my friends in advance of my intentions and ask
whether they were willing to lend themselves to such a proceeding. One
cannot invite a man without previous explanation and then, when he's
already in one's house, ask him to lie down to dinner with a slave."

"Slave!" Tanno roared at me, his face red as the back of a boiled lobster.
If I had just missed being angry with him, there was no doubt that he was
in a tearing fury with me.

"Slave?" he repeated. "Agathemer still a slave? Are you joking or are you
serious? Is this true?"

"Entirely and literally true." I affirmed.

Tanno, so red that I should have thought it impossible that he could grow
redder, grew redder.

"If your uncle," he roared, "did not free him in his will he was a hog. If
you haven't freed him yourself, you're a hog. Free him here and now! Show
some decency and some gratitude! Better late than never. Here, Agathemer,
get off that boy's stool and lie down between me and Entedius."

"Go slow, Caius!" I admonished him. "You just confessed that you know
nothing of the circumstances, yet you give orders in my house, orders
affecting my property-rights, without first acquainting yourself with all
the conditions on which such orders should be based, even if you had asked
and received my permission to issue them."

Tanno was impulsive, even headlong, but he never wrangled or quarrelled
and seldom lost his temper. I had feared a still more violent outburst
from him, but my admonition brought him to himself.

"I apologize," he said, the red fading from his face. "Tell me the whole
matter, so that I may comprehend. I'll listen in silence."

"The vital fact," I said, "is that, although I fully expected my uncle, in
his will, to free Agathemer, he not only did not free him, but he enjoined
me not to free him within five years after my entrance into my
inheritance."

"Well," said Tanno, "I take back what I said of you when I called you a
hog, but, even if we are taught to utter nothing but good of the dead, I
repeat that your uncle was a hog. What do you think of it, Agathemer?"

Agathemer sat at ease now on his stool and his face was placid.

"Since you have asked what I think," he said, "may I assume that you
accord me permission to utter what I think, as if I were even a free man?"

"Utter precisely what you think, without any reservations or
modifications," said Tanno. "I want to have exactly what you think and all
you think."

"I think," spoke Agathemer, "that you are neither wise to speak so of the
dead nor justified in speaking so of my former master. He was a just man
and a wise man. Though I cannot conjecture his reason, I am sure that what
he did was, somehow, for the best."

Tanno stared at him with a puzzled expression.

He turned to me.

"Isn't it true," he queried, "that your uncle had on his hands an
hereditary lawsuit of the most exasperating sort, in the course of which
the other side had won the first decision and every appeal?"

"Everybody knows that, Socrates," I admitted.

"Didn't Agathemer," Tanno pressed me, "just before the case was heard in
the highest court, make a suggestion which your uncle's lawyers utilized
and through which they won the case?"

"That is also true," I affirmed.

"Didn't they all say, that Agathemer's suggestion was just what they
should have thought of at the very first and didn't they admit that they
had not thought of it until Agathemer suggested it and that they never
would have thought of it if he had not suggested it?"

"Those are the facts," I confessed.

"In view of those facts," Tanno continued, "what did you yourself expect
your uncle to do for Agathemer in his will?"

I ruminated.

"The very least I anticipated," I said, "was that he would free Agathemer
and make him a present equal to the value of half the property in dispute
in the lawsuit. As Ducconius had had to repay to my uncle the full amount
of the rents paid since his family first gained possession of the
property, that would have been a very moderate reward for Agathemer's
service. I also conjectured that he might free Agathemer and will him a
sum equivalent to the net proceeds of the repaid rents, less the costs of
the suit. I should not have been surprised if he had made him a present of
the whole farm out and out. Many an owner has done more for a slave who
had done less for him."

"And you would have regarded it as fair if your uncle had taken any of
those methods of recompensing Agathemer?"

"Certainly!" I affirmed.

"Then why, in the name of Mercury," he demanded, "didn't you free
Agathemer the moment the will was read?"

"I have told you over and over," I retorted impatiently, "that my uncle's
will enjoined me not to free Agathemer within five years, though he also
enjoined that I was to make a new will at once so as to leave Agathemer
free and recompensed if I died before the five years elapsed."

"But the injunction was not binding," Tanno persisted, "either in law or
by religious custom. No dead man can prevent his heirs freeing slaves he
leaves them. Why heed the injunction?"

"I could not contravene so explicit a behest of the dead," I demurred,
"especially of a man I loved and revered. And you must recall my uncle's
queer habit of acting on intuitions and the way he expressed them, always
saying:

"'It has been revealed to me that....' And his intuitions always seemed to
amount to prevision, he never seemed to have acted amiss, however
eccentric his act, however baseless his premonition. I have a feeling that
in Agathemer's case he acted on some such presentiment."

Tanno turned to Agathemer.

"Do you feel that way too?" he demanded.

"I most certainly do," said Agathemer, "I have a feeling that my remaining
a slave is going to be of vital service to Hedulio, somehow, sometime."

"Then you are content to remain a slave?" Tanno queried.

"No one wants to remain a slave," Agathemer confessed, "and every slave
longs to be a free man and is impatient to be free at once. But I try to
be resigned, of course, and, except that I cannot rejoice in not being
free, I am as well fed, clothed and housed as I should be as a free man
and have as much leisure."

Tanno glowered at both of us.

I cut in:

"You must remember that Agathemer was raised almost as a free man and
almost as my brother. We slept and played together from the time we could
walk. We had the same tutors, always, when in the country, both in
Bruttium and in Sabinum. In Rome, while I was at school, Agathemer was
taught the same subjects at home. We love each other almost as brothers.
Both of us were amazed when grandfather left Agathemer to my Uncle instead
of to my father or to me. We were more amazed at Uncle's will. But as
things are between us, Agathemer not only looks forward to freedom and an
estate within five years, but knows that his interval of waiting will be
pleasant, as pleasant as I can make it."

"But," Tanno objected, "think of the danger he is in while a slave. For
instance, just suppose--(may the gods avert the omen)--that you were
murdered in your bed this very night and no clue to the murderer found.
Nothing could save Agathemer from being tortured along with all your other
slaves."

"Pooh!" I cried. "You are behind the times! You may be an unsurpassable
expert on dress and manners, on perfumery and jewels, but you could know
more law. All those ferocious old statutes have been abolished by the
enactments of Antoninus and Aurelius. A slave, during good behavior, is
almost as safe as a freedman."

"It is you," Tanno countered, "who are behind the times. Commodus has had
rescinded every edict ameliorating the condition of slaves promulgated
since the accession of Trajan. As Nerva did little for them the status of
slaves is now practically what it was at the death of Domitian."

"Anyhow," spoke up Agathemer, "whatever real or fancied perils hang over
me, by my late master's will and wish, a slave I am and a slave I remain
till the five years elapse. Even thereafter I shall be Hedulio's devoted
servitor, meanwhile I am his devoted slave."

"Does being his slave inhibit you from telling the truth about him?" Tanno
queried.

"If it is to his discredit, certainly," Agathemer answered.

"Suppose it is to his credit, very much to his credit," Tanno pursued.

"Then I am permitted to tell the truth," laughed Agathemer.

"Then," said Tanno, "tell us the whole truth about Hedulio and Chryseros
Philargyrus and the bull."

Agathemer laughed out loud.

"Delighted to oblige you," he bowed.  Tanno looked at me.

"Hedulio is blushing," he said, "this promises to be interesting. As king
of the revels I forbid Hedulio from interrupting. Everybody drain a
goblet. Boy, pour a goblet for Agathemer. Agathemer, take a good long
drink, so you may start in good voice. And, boy, fill his goblet again
when it gets low. Keep an eye on it. Begin, Agathemer."

"It is a shorter story than you anticipate," Agathemer began.

"Hedulio and I had completed the final inspection of the estate. We had
begun each inspection with Chryseros' farm and had taken the farms in
rotation, ending up with Feliger's. We had inspected Macer's farm in the
morning, had had a leisurely bath, lunch and snooze and had ridden out to
Feliger's. After looking over the last details of the toolsheds and
henneries we were riding home under the over-arching elms down Bran Lane.
As we passed Chryseros' entrance we heard yells for help. Hedulio spurred
his horse up the avenue and towards the yells, I after him. The yells
guided us to the lower barn-yard gate. Hedulio reined up abruptly, leaped
off, leaving me to catch his mare, and vaulted the gate. I tethered our
mounts as quickly as I could and climbed the gate. I saw old Chryseros
pinned against the wall of his barley-barn, in between the horns of his
white bull. The points of the bull's horns were driven into the wood of
the barn and the horns were so long that Chryseros was in no immediate
danger of being crushed between the bull's forehead and the barn wall. The
bull was so enraged that he was pushing with all his might, puffing and
bellowing, spraying Chryseros' legs with froth, grunting and lowing
between bellows. As long as he kept on pushing Chryseros was more scared
than hurt; but, sooner or later, the bull was certain to draw back, lunge,
and skewer Chryseros on one or the other of his horns.

"When I first saw them Chryseros and the bull were as I have described.
Hedulio was twisting the bull's tail.

"The bull paid no more attention to the tail-twisting than if Hedulio had
been in the moon.

"Hedulio shouted to Chryseros to hold tight to the bull's horns, as he was
already doing, and to stand still. He let go the bull's tail and turned
round. Seeing me, he ordered me to get back over the gate and to stay
there. He looked about, ran to the stable door, peered in, went in and
returned with a manure fork. With that in his hand he ran back to the bull
and jabbed him with the fork.

"Then the bull did roar. He backed suddenly away from the barn, shaking
his horns loose from the futile grip Chryseros had on them, and whirled on
Hedulio. Hedulio jabbed him in the neck with the fork. The bull bellowed
with rage, it seemed, more than with pain, lowered his head and charged at
Hedulio.

"Hedulio side-stepped as deftly as a professional beast-fighter in an
amphitheatre and to my amazement, well as I knew him, threw away the fork.

"The bull's rush carried him almost the whole breadth of the barn-yard.
When he turned round he stood, pawing the ground, shaking his head and
bellowing. I never saw a bull angrier-looking. He lowered his head to
charge.

"But he never charged.

"Hedulio was walking toward him and the bull just stood and pawed and
bellowed till Hedulio caught hold of the ring in his nose and led him off
to his pen.

"Chryseros, who had dodged through the little door into the barn and had
slammed it after him, had peered out of it just before Hedulio reached the
bull and had stood, mouth open, hands hanging, letting the door swing wide
open.

"Hedulio led the bull into the pen, patted him on the neck and then turned
his back on him and sauntered out of the pen, shutting the gate without
hurry.

"Chryseros ran to him, stumbling as he ran, fell on his knees, caught
Hedulio's hand, and poured out a torrent of thanks."

"Did all that really happen?" Tanno queried.

"Precisely as I have told it." Agathemer affirmed.

"Well," said Tanno, "I know why Caius did not want to tell it. He knew I'd
think it an impudent lie."

"Don't you believe it?" Agathemer asked, respectfully.

"Well," Tanno drawled, "I've been watching the faces of the audience.
Nobody has laughed or smiled or sneered. I'm an expert on curios and
antiques and other specialties, but I am no wiser on bulls than any other
city man. So I suppose I ought to believe it. But it struck me, while I
listened to you, as the biggest lie I ever heard. I apologize for my
incredulity."

"It would be incredible," said Juventius Muso, "if told of any one except
Hedulio and it would probably be untrue. As it is told of Hedulio it is
probably true and also entirely credible."

"Why of Caius any more than any one else?" queried Tanno.

Muso stared at him.

"I beg pardon," he said, "but I somehow got the idea that you were an old
and close friend of our host."

"I was and am," Tanno asserted.

"And know nothing," Muso pressed him, "of his marvellous powers over
animals of all kinds, even over birds and fish?"

"Never heard he had any such powers." Tanno confessed.

"How's this, Hedulio?" Juventius demanded of me.

"I suppose," I said, "that Tanno and I have mostly been together at Rome.
Animals are scarcer there than in the country and human beings more
plentiful. He knows more of my dealings with men and women than with other
creatures."

"Besides," Tanno cut in, "you must all remember that our Caius not only
never boasts but is absurdly reticent about anything he has done of such a
kind that most men would brag of it. Towards his chums and cronies he is
open-hearted and as unreserved as a friend could be about everything else,
but especially close with them about such matters. So I know nothing of
his powers concerning which you speak."

My guests cried out in amazement, all talking at once.

"I'm king of the revels," Tanno reminded them.

"Juventius was talking; let him say his say. Everyone of you shall talk
his fill, I promise you. I am immensely interested and curious, as I
expect to hear many things which I should have heard from Caius any time
these ten years. Speak out, Juventius!"

"Before I say what I meant to say," Muso began, "I want to ask some
questions. What you have just told me has amazed me and what little you
have said leaves me puzzled. Surely there are dogs in Rome?"

"Plenty," Tanno assured him.

"Haven't you ever seen a vicious dog fly at Hedulio?" Muso pursued.

"Many a time," Tanno admitted.

"Did you ever see one bite him?" Muso asked.

"Never!" Tanno affirmed.

"Can you recall what happened?" queried Muso.

Tanno rubbed his chin.

"It seems to me," he said, "that every time I saw a snarling cur or an
open-mouthed watch-dog rush at Caius, the dog slowed his rush before he
reached him, circled about him, sniffing, and trotted back where he came
from."

"Did you never see Hedulio beckon such a dog, handle and gentle him, even
pet him."

"Once I did, as I now recall," Tanno confessed, "yet I thought nothing of
it at the time and forgot it at once."

"Probably," Muso conjectured, "you thought the dog was only pretending to
be cross and was really tame."

"Just about that, I suppose," Tanno ruminated.

"Well," said Muso, "I take it that any one of the dogs you saw run at
Hedulio was affected by him just as was the bull this afternoon; each
began by acting towards him as he would have towards any other man; each
was cowed and tendered mild by the nearer sight of him. That is the way
Hedulio affects all animals whatever."

"Tell us some cases you have seen yourself," Tanno suggested.

"I fear your skepticism, even your derision," Muso demurred.

"I haven't a trace of either left in me by now," Tanno declared. "What you
say has knocked the mental wind out of me, so to speak, and I see that the
others feel as you do and seem to have similar ideas to express. I vow I
believe you, gentlemen, though something inside me is still numb with
amazement. Tell us, Juventius, the biggest story you know of these alleged
powers of our Caius."

"I told you so," said Muso. "In spite of your disclaimers you slip in that
'alleged.' I don't like that 'alleged' of yours, Opsitius."

"That wasn't mine." Tanno laughed. "That was the numb something inside me
talking in its sleep. I'm all sympathetic interest, with no admixture of
unbelief. I can see you have startling anecdotes to tell. Tell the most
startling."

"The most startling," Juventius began, "I most solemnly aver is literally
true. Hedulio and I were once riding along a woodcutters' road through the
forests on the Aemilian estate, in the wildest portion of it. The road
forms a part of a good short-cut from Villa Aemilia to this valley. It was
hot weather and very dry. We were both thirsty. There is a cool and
abundant spring not many paces up a steep path on the left of that road.
At the path we tethered our horses and walked to the spring. When we had
quenched our thirst and had started down the little glade below the spring
we saw the head of a big gray wolf appear among some ferns at the lower
end of the glade by the path on our left. I stopped, for we had no
weapons. Hedulio, however, went on, never altering his easy saunter. The
wolf came out of the ferns and paced up to Hedulio like a house dog.
Hedulio patted his head, pulled his ears and the wolf not only did not
attack him nor snap at him, nor even snarl, but showed his pleasure as
plainly as any pet dog. When Hedulio had stopped petting him, I reached
them. We two went on as if we were alone, leaving the wolf standing
looking after us as if he were watch-dog at the house of an intimate
friend."

"Rome," said Tanno, when Muso paused, "is rated the most wonderful place
on earth. Rome is my home. Rome rates Sabinum low, except for olives,
wines, oaks, sheep and mules. Wonders are not named among the staple
products of Sabinum. Yet I come to Sabinum for the first time and hear
wonders such as I never dreamed of at Rome."

"And you are only at the beginning of such wonders," spoke up Entedius
Hirnio. "That tale of Muso's is mild to one I can tell and I take oath in
advance to every word of my story."

"Begin it then, in the name of Hercules," Tanno urged him. "If it is what
you herald we cannot have it too quickly."

"When Hedulio and I were hardly more than boys," Hirnio began, "we bird-
nested and fished and hunted and roamed the woods like any pair of country
lads. Parts of our woodland hereabouts are wilder than anything on the
Aemilian estate, and we liked the wildest parts best. I had an uncle at
Amiternum and it happened that Hedulio's uncle allowed him to go with me
once when my father visited his brother. My uncle had a farm high up in
the mountains east of Amiternum and Hedulio and I there revelled in
wildness wilder than anything hereabouts. We had no fear and ranged the
hillsides, ravines and pine-woods eager and unafraid.

"High up the mountains we blundered on a bear's den with two cubs in it.
They were old enough to be playful and young enough not to be fierce or
dangerous. I was for carrying them off, but Hedulio said that if the
mother returned before we were well on our way home she would certainly
catch us before we could reach a place of safety and we should certainly
be killed.

"'We had better stop playing with these fascinating little brutes,' he
said, 'and be as far off as possible before she comes back.'

"Just as he said it we heard twigs snapping, the crash of rent underbrush,
and I looked up and saw the bear coming.

"I had never seen a wild bear till then. She looked to me as big as a half
grown calf, and as fat as a six-year-old sow. She came like a race-horse.
Besides my instantaneous sense of her size, weight and speed, I saw only
her great red mouth, wide-open, set round with gleaming white teeth, from
which came a snarl like the roar of a cataract.

"I sprang to the nearest tree which promised a refuge, caught the lowest
boughs and scrambled up, the angry snarls of the bear filling my ears. As
I reached the first strong branch the snarls stopped.

"I settled myself and looked down.

"The bear was standing still, some paces from her den, peering at it and
snuffing the air, working her nose it seemed to me, and moving her head
from side to side.

"Hedulio had not moved. He stood just where I had left him, one cub in his
arms, the other cuddled at his feet.

"The bear, growling very short, almost inaudible growls, approached him
slowly, moving only one foot at a time and pausing before she lifted
another foot. She sniffed at the cub on the ground, sniffed at Hedulio's
legs, and looked up at the cub in his arms. She made a sound more like a
whine than a growl. Hedulio lowered the cub and she sniffed at it. Then
Hedulio caught her by the back of the neck. She did not snarl but yielded
to his pull and rolled over on her side. He picked up the cub on the
ground and laid both by her nipples. They went to, nursing avidly, almost
like little pigs, yet also somewhat like puppies. Hedulio sauntered away
and to my tree, beckoned me down and we strolled away as if there were no
bear near: she in fact paying no attention to either of us after the cubs
began nursing her."

Tanno looked wildly about.

"Boys," he said, "forgive me if I am dazed, and don't be insulted. I
recall that Entedius prefaced his narrative with an oath to its veracity.
I am ready to believe all this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible
feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that
it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent.
Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me,
for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is doubly
on me. As I am the butt, either way, don't be too hard on me: Please set
me right."

They chorused at him that they had all heard the story, most of them soon
after the marvel took place; that they had always believed it, and
believed it then. I corroborated Hirnio's exactitude as to all the
details.




CHAPTER IV

HOROSCOPES AND MARVELS


Tanno looked about again, less wildly, but still like a man in a daze.

"But," he cried, "if you do such wonders, how do you do them, Caius?"

"I don't know now," I said, "any more than I knew the first time I gentled
a fierce strange dog. It came natural then, it always has come natural."

"Naturally," said Lisius Naepor, "since it is part of your nature from
before birth. Do you mean to tell us, Opsitius, that Hedulio has never
shown you his horoscope?"

"Never!" said Tanno, "and he never spoke of it to me. I'm Spanish, you
know, by ancestry, and Spaniards are not Syrians or Egyptians. Horoscopes
don't figure largely in Spanish life. I never bothered about horoscopes, I
suppose. So I never mentioned horoscopes to Hedulio nor he to me."

"Nor he to you of course," said Neponius Pomplio, "he is too modest."

"In fact," said Naepor. "I should never have known of Hedulio's horoscope
if his uncle had not shown me a copy. Caius has never mentioned it, unless
one of us talked of it first."

"What's the point of the horoscope?" Tanno queried.

"Why you see," Naepor explained. "Hedulio was born in the third watch of
the night on the Ides of September.

"Now it is well known that persons are likely to be competent trainers of
animals if they are born under the influence of the Whale or of the
Centaur or the Lion or the Scorpion or when the Lesser Bear rises at dawn
or in those watches of the night when the Great Bear, after swinging low
in the northern sky, is again beginning to swing upwards, or at those
hours of the day when, as it can be established by calculations, the Great
Bear, though invisible in the glow of the sunlight, is in that part of its
circle round the northern pole.

"It is disputed which of these constellations has the most powerful
influence, but it is generally reckoned that the Whale is most
influential, next the Centaur, next the Lion, and the Scorpion least of
all, while the dawn rising of the Lesser Bear and the beginning of the
upward motion of the Great Bear are held to have merely auxiliary
influence when the other signs are favorable. If two or more of these are
at one and the same time powerful in the sky at the moment of any one's
birth, he will be an unusually capable animal-tamer, the more puissant
according as more of the potent stars shine upon his birth.

"It is manifest that, at no day and hour, will all of these signs conspire
at their greatest potency. For clearly, for instance, the Lion and the
Scorpion, being both in the Zodiac, and being separated in the Zodiac by
the interposition of two entire constellations, can never be in the
ascendant at one and the same time, nor can one be near the ascendant when
the other is in that position. Yet there are times when a majority of them
all exert their most potent or nearly their most potent influence, there
are some moments when their possible combination of influences is nearly
at its maximum potency.

"Now the day, hour, and moment of Hedulio's birth is, as astrologers
agree, precisely that instant of the entire year when the stars combine
their magic powers with their most puissant force to produce their
greatest possible effect on the nature of a child born at that instant, in
order that he may have irresistible sway over the wills of all fierce,
wild and ferocious animals.

"Such, from his birth and by the divine might of his birth-stars, is our
Hedulio."

"After all that," said Tanno, "I should believe anything. I believe the
tale of the she-bear. Who has another to tell?"

"Before anyone begins another anecdote," said Neponius Pomplio, "I want to
state my opinion that Hedulio's habitual and instantaneous subjugation of
vicious dogs which have never before set eyes on him and his miraculous
powers of similarly pacifying such wild animals as bears and wolves, while
inexpressibly marvellous, is no more wonderful, if, in fact, as wondrous
as his power to attract to him, even from a great distance, creatures
naturally solitary, or timorous."

"It is strange," said Juventius Muso, "that I should have begun by telling
the story of the wolf at the spring, an occurrence of which I was the only
witness, instead of mentioning first Hedulio's power over deer, something
known to all of us, and many miracles which everyone of us has seen. I
suppose we each thought of the most spectacular example of Hedulio's
powers known to us, whereas he had so generally handled and gentled deer
that we instinctively regarded that as commonplace."

"I think you are right," said Lisius Naepor, "for Hedulio's ability to
approach a doe with fawns and to handle the young in sight of the mother
without her showing any sign of alarm or concern, is, to my mind, quite as
marvellous as his dealings with the she-bear. It seems to me as miraculous
to overcome the timidity of the doe as the ferocity of the bear. And we
have all seen him play with fawns, fawns so young that they had barely
begun to follow their dam. We have all seen a herd of deer stand placidly
and let him approach them, move about among them, handle them. We have all
seen him handle and gentle stags, even old stags in the rutting season.
There is no gainsaying our Hedulio's power over animals, it is a matter of
too general and too common knowledge."

"I have seen a mole," said Fisevius Rusco, "come out of its burrow at dusk
and eat earth worms out of Hedulio's hand."

"I," said Naepor, "have watched him catch a butterfly and, holding it
uncrushed, walk into a wood, and have seen a woodthrush flutter down to
him, take the butterfly from his fingers, speed away with it to feed its
young and presently return to his empty hand, as if expecting another
insect, perch on his hand, peck at it and remain some time; and there is
no song-bird more fearful of mankind, more aloof, more retiring, more
secret than a wood-thrush."

Several of the others told of my similarly attracting seed-eating birds
with handfuls of millet, wheat or other grains or seeds; of squirrels,
anywhere in the forests, coming down trees to me and taking nuts from my
fingers.

Bultius Seclator said:

"I have seen Hedulio seat himself on a rock in the sunshine and seen a
golden eagle, circling in the sky, circle lower and lower till he perched
on Hedulio's wrist and not only perched there, but sat there some time,
preening his feathers as if alone on the dead topmost limb of a tall tree,
eye Hedulio's face without pecking at him and finally take wing and leave
Hedulio's arm not only untorn by his talons, but unscratched, without even
a mark of the claw-points."

Said Mallius Vulso:

"Hedulio has a way of catching flies with a quick sweep of his hand. I
have seen him catch a fly and hold him, buzzing between his fingers and
thumb and have seen a lizard run up to him and dart at the fly."

"And I," said Lisius Naepor, "have seen fish in a tank rise to his hand
and let him take them out of the water, handle them and slip them back
into the water again, all without a struggle."

"More wonderful than that," spoke up Juventius Muso, "I have seen lampreys
feed from his hand without biting it, and I have even seen him pick up
lampreys out of the water without their attempting to bite him. I'll wager
no other man ever did the like."

"True," ruminated Naepor, "Hedulio can pick up and handle a puff-adder and
it will never strike at him and he can similarly handle any kind of
snake."

"Well," Tanno summed up, after they had talked the subject out, "you
countrymen beat me. Here I've been cronying with Caius for years and years
and never suspected any such wizardry in him."

"May I speak?" asked Agathemer from his stool, where he had sat silent,
sipping his wine very moderately at infrequent intervals.

"Certainly, man," said Tanno, "speak up if you have anything to tell as
good as the bull story."

"Although I know my master's modesty." Agathemer said, "I cannot conceive
how you can have associated with him so long without knowing of his power
over animals. Have you never seen him, for instance, with Nemestronia's
leopard?"

"Never that I recall," said Tanno, "and if I had I should have thought
nothing of it. Nemestronia's leopard has been tame since it learned to
suck milk from Nemestronia's fingers, before its eyes were half open. It
always has been tame and is tame with everybody, not only with all
Nemestronia's household, not only with frequenters of her reception rooms,
but also with casual visitors, total strangers to it. Nobody would think
it anything wonderful for Hedulio to handle Nemestronia's leopard."

"I do not mean merely handling," said Agathemer respectfully. "I mean
something quite amazing in itself. And that leads me to remark that none
of you gentlemen has mentioned or referred to what I regard as one of my
master's most amazing feats and one which he has repeated countless times
in the presence of uncountable witnesses: I mean taking a bone away from a
vicious dog which has never seen him before. I think that amounts to a
portent, or would if it had not happened so often."

"Incredible!" cried Tanno.

Then the whole room broke into a hubbub of confirmations and
corroborations of Agathemer's statement.

"I give in," Tanno declared, "now for the leopard."

"I am told," said Agathemer, "that all such animals, lions, tigers,
leopards, panthers and lynxes, when they set out on their nocturnal
prowlings, intent on catching prey, have the strange habit of giving
notice to all creatures within hearing that they are about to begin
hunting, by a series of roars, snarls, squalls, screams, screeches or
whatever they may be properly called for each variety of animal.

"Now one of the tricks of Nemestronia's leopard, which she is fond of
exhibiting to her guests, is its method of approaching any live creature
exposed to its mercy for its food. If a kid, hare, lamb, porker or what
not is turned into one of Nemestronia's walled gardens and the leopard let
in, she will, at first sight of the game, crouch belly-flat on the ground
and give out a really appalling series of screams or whatever they should
be called, entirely unlike any other noise she ever makes. Her hunting-
squall, as Nemestronia calls it, rises and falls like a tune on an organ,
and besides changing from shriller to less shrill alters in volume from
louder to less loud and louder again. It is an experience to hear it, for
it is like no sound anyone in Rome ever heard and is unforgettable."

"There you are wrong," Tanno cut in, "it is the normal hunting cry of a
leopard. But not many leopards in captivity ever give it. She is the only
leopard I ever heard give it in captivity, but I have heard it in the
deserts south of Gaetulia and Africa, when I was there with my cohort,
while I was still in the army. And let me tell you right here, what I have
often told Nemestronia, only the dear self-willed old lady will not listen
to me at all, there will be trouble yet with that leopard. She has been a
parlor and bedroom pet from birth and she is tame, not only to all
Nemestronia's household but to all visitors. But the mere fact that she is
old enough to give her hunting-squall for small game is warning enough, if
Nemestronia would only realize it, that she is getting fiercer as she gets
older. It's only a question of time, no matter how liberally she is fed,
that she will turn on her human associates. Possibly she'll give them
warning with her hunting-squall, and precious little help it will be
towards escaping her, but most likely she'll just turn on someone, without
warning, and there'll be a corpse and a pool of blood on the floor or
pavement. You mark my words: that is coming as sure as fate, if
Nemestronia keeps that leopard about her mansion."

"That may all be true," Hirnio cut in, "but Opsitius, do let Agathemer say
his say, whatever it may be."

"You are right and I was wrong," Tanno admitted.

"Proceed, Agathemer."

"Let me describe her behavior fully, for the sake of others," Agathemer
resumed. "When she sights a victim she flattens herself out on the ground
and gives her long, quavering squall. If the victim remains stationary she
crawls toward it very slowly, almost imperceptibly, moving one paw only at
a time. If it runs about she ceases her advance and pivots around until it
is again stationary and she facing it. She keeps that up until she is
within springing distance. But if she sees it near a gate or a door and
apparently trying to escape through that, she springs and bounds on it.
Otherwise, if the victim keeps quiet and still, she spends a long time in
her approach, seeming to enjoy every breath she draws and to be gloating
over her helpless prey."

"Just so, gentlemen," Tanno put in, "Agathemer is exact. I have seen all
that over and over."

"It is the more astonishing to me," Agathemer went on, "that you have
never seen Hedulio divert her attention and entice her away from her
victim, even when she is within leaping distance and ready for her final
spring. That, to me, is the only thing I ever saw Hedulio do surpassing
his repeated success in taking a bone from a cross dog without resistance
from the dog."

"Never saw him do it," Tanno declared. "Never heard of it from
Nemestronia, and she'll talk 'leopard' by the hour, if you let her. Never
suspected any such sorcery from Hedulio. How does he do it? Expound his
methods."

"Very simple," said Agathemer. "He calls to her or he walks in front of
her. At once she turns her attention to him, appears to forget her prey
altogether, rubs against him, purrs, lets him chafe her ears, head and
neck, seems to beg for more chafing, rolls on the ground by him and
invites him to play with her. Sometimes she seems to insist on his playing
with her and to threaten to lose her temper unless he does play with her."

"What do you mean by playing with her?" Tanno queried.

"Have you ever seen any of these little Egyptian cats which some folks
have nowadays for pets?" Agathemer asked in his turn. "Creatures about as
long as your forearm and rather gentle?"

"Certainly," said Tanno. "I've seen a number of them at ultra-fashionable
mansions of the fast set, who must have the latest novelty."

"Ever see any of their kittens?" Agathemer asked.

"Two or three times I have," Tanno replied. "Amusing, fluffy little
creatures, not much bigger than a man's hand."

"Ever see one play with a ball?" Agathemer asked.

Tanno laughed.

"Run after a ball, you mean," he said, "slap it first with one paw and
then with the other, bound after it and all that?"

"No," said Agathemer, "I do not mean that way; I mean the way a kitten
will pretend that a ball is another kitten, will lie on the floor with the
ball between its paws, will kick it with its hind feet and paw at it with
its forefeet and yet not really claw it."

"I've seen that, too," said Tanno.

"Well," said Agathemer, "Hedulio acts as the ball or the other kitten for
that big leopard. He lies down on the pavement by her and they tussle like
two puppies, only it is cat-play not dog-play. Hedulio kicks and slaps the
leopard and she kicks and slaps him, and they are all mixed up like a pair
of wrestlers, and she growls and mouths his hands and arms and shoulders,
yet she never bites or claws him, does all that clawing of him with her
claws sheathed; never hurts him, and, when she has had enough play, lets
him lead her off to her cage."

"Miraculous!" cried Tanno, "but beastly undignified. Fancy a Roman, of
equestrian rank, moving in Rome's best society circles, a friend of the
Emperor, sprawling on a pavement playing with a stinking leopard, letting
her tousle him and rumple his clothes, and letting her slobber her foul
saliva all over his arms and shoulders! I'm ashamed of you, Hedulio!"

"Nothing to be ashamed of!" I said. "I thought it fun, every time I have
done it, and I did it only for Nemestronia and a few of her intimates,
never before any large gathering."

"I should hope not!" Tanno cried, "and I trust you will never try it
again. It's disgraceful! And it's too risky. If you keep it up some fine
day she'll slash the face off you or bite your whole head off at one
snap."

I was surprised and abashed at Tanno's reception of the leopard story and
Agathemer seemed similarly affected and more so than I. He tried to start
a diversion.

"Most marvellous of all Hedulio's exploits," he said, "I account his
encounter with the piebald horse."

"Tell us about it," said Tanno. "Horse-training is, at least, and always,
an activity fit for a gentleman and wholly decent and respectable."

"It happened last year," said Agathemer, "in the autumn, before Andivius
died; in fact, before we had any reason to dread that the end of his life
was near. Entedius saw it, perhaps he would be a more suitable narrator
than I."

"Go on," said Hirnio, "I'd rather listen to you than talk myself."

Agathemer resumed.

"We were at Reate Fair. You know how such festivals are always attended by
horse-dealers and all sorts of such cheats and mountebanks. There was a
plausible and ingratiating horse-dealer with some good horses. Entedius
bought one and has it yet."

"And no complaints to make," said Hirnio, "the brute was as represented
and has given satisfaction in every way."

"Some others in our party bought horses of him also." Agathemer continued.
"Later, when the sports were on, he brought out a tall, long-barrelled
piebald horse, rather a well-shaped beast, and one which would have been
handsome had he been cream or bay. He showed off his paces and then
offered him as a free gift to anyone who could stick on him without a
fall. Several farm-lads tried and he threw them by simple buckings and
rearings. Some more experienced horse-wranglers tried, but he threw one
after the other.

"Then there came forward Blaesus Agellus, the best horse-master about
Reate. He had watched till he thought he knew all the young stallion's
tricks. No kicking, rearing or bucking could unseat him and the beast
tried several unusual and bizarre contortions. Blaesus stuck on. Then the
horse-dealer seemed to give a signal, as the horse cantered tamely round
the ring.

"Instantly the horse, without any motion which gave warning of what he was
about to do, threw himself sideways flat on the ground.

"Blaesus was stunned and his right leg badly bruised, though not broken.

"The owner gloried in his treasure and boasted of his control over the
horse, even at a distance.

"Then Hedulio came forward. The crowd was visibly amazed to see a young
nobleman put himself on a level with the commonality. But they all knew
Hedulio's affable ways and there were no hoots or jeers.

"Hedulio examined the horse carefully, fetlocks, hoofs, mouth and all.
Then he gentled and patted it. When he vaulted into the saddle, the brute
did a little rearing, kicking and bucking, but soon quieted.

"Hedulio trotted him round the ring, calling to the owner:

"I dare you to try all your signals.'

"The owner seemed to try, at first far back in the crowd, so confident was
he of his control of the horse, then nearer, then standing in the front
row of spectators.

"The horse remained quiet.

"So Hedulio rode him home and all at the villa acclaimed the horse a great
prize.

"The marvel was that he was only a two-year-old, as all experts agreed. I
have seen many trick horses, but seldom a good trick horse under eight
years old and never a well-trained trick horse under four years old. This
was barely two."

"Is he still in your stables?" Tanno asked.

"Let Agathemer finish his tale," I replied.

"Two mornings afterward," Agathemer summed up, "we found the stable was
broken into and the young stallion gone. No other horse had been stolen."

"Just what might have been expected," said Tanno, "and now, as king of the
revels, I pronounce this symposium at an end. I mean to be up by dawn and
to get Hedulio up soon after I am awake. I mean to start back for Rome
with him as soon after dawn as I can arrange. You other gentlemen can
sleep as late as you like, of course."

"I'm going with you," Hirnio cut in. "I came prepared, with my servant and
led-mule loaded with my outfit. I'm to be up as soon as you two."

"Let's all turn in," Tanno proposed.

Mallius Vulso and Neponius Pomplio, who lived nearest me, declared their
intention of riding home in the moon-light. The others discussed whether
they should also go home or sleep in the rooms ready for them. I urged
them to stay, but finally, they all decided to ride home.

Agathemer went to give orders for their horses to be brought round.

"By the way, Caius," Tanno asked, "how are you going to travel?"

"On horseback," I replied.

"Why not in your carriage?" he queried. "I was hoping to ride with you to
the Via Salaria, at least, unless your roads jolt a carriage as badly as
bearers on them jolt a litter. What's wrong with the superperfect
travelling carriage of your late Uncle?"

"I have lent it," I explained, "to Marcus Martius, to travel to Rome in
with his bride. I wrote you of his wedding. He has just married my uncle's
freedwoman Marcia. I wrote you about it."

"Pooh!" cried Tanno, "how should I remember the marriage of a freedwoman I
never saw with a bumpkin I never heard of?"

"No bumpkin," cut in Lisius Naepor. "Not any more of a bumpkin than I or
any of the rest of us here. You are too high and mighty, Opsitius. It is
true that in our countryside the only senators are Aemilius, Vedius and
Satronius, and that in our immediate vicinity Hirnio and Hedulio are the
only proprietors of equestrian rank but we commoners here are no bumpkins
or clodhoppers."

"I apologize," Tanno spoke conciliatingly. "You are right to call me down.
We Romans of Rome really know the worth of farmers and provincials and the
like. But we are so used, among ourselves, to thinking of Rome as the
whole world, that our speech belies our esteem for our equals. I should
not have spoken so. Who is Marcus Martius, Caius, and who is Marcia?"

"Marcus Martius," I said, "is a local landowner like the rest of us. He
would have been here to-night but for his recent marriage and approaching
journey to Rome. I have always asked him to my dinners."

"Then how, in the name of Ops Consiva," cried Tanno, "did he come to marry
your uncle's freedwoman?"

"This time I agree with you, Opsitius," said Naepor. "Your tone of scorn
is wholly justified. Marrying freedwomen is getting far too common. If
things go on this way there will be no Roman nobility nor gentry nor even
any Roman commonality; just a wish-wash of counterfeit Romans, nine-tenths
foreign in ancestry, with just enough of a dash of Roman blood to bequeath
them our weaknesses and vices."

"On the other hand," said Juventius Muso, "while agreeing with Naepor as
to the propriety of the tone, I object to the question. Instead of asking
how Martius came to marry Marcia, had you been acquainted with the recent
past history of this neighborhood, Opsitius, you would have asked how most
of the rest of us managed to escape marrying her."

"A freedwoman!" cried Tanno.

"A most unusual freedwoman," Hirnio asserted, "as she was almost a portent
as a slave-girl. Haven't you ever heard of her, Opsitius?"

"We Romans," Tanno bantered, "are lamentably ignorant on the life-
histories of brood-sows, slave-girls, prize-heifers and such-like
notabilities of Sabinum."

"She is no Sabine," Hirnio retorted, "but, as far as the locality of her
birth and upbringing goes, is as Roman as you are. Did you never hear of
Ummidius Quadratus?"

"Hush!" Tanno breathed. "I have heard of the man you have named, heard of
him on the deaf side of my head, as did all Rome. But, in the name of
Minerva, do not utter his name. It is best forgotten. Even so long after
his execution and so far from Rome, the mention of the name of anyone
implicated as he was might have most unfortunate results."

"Not here and among us," Hirnio declared. "The point is that Quadratus had
a eunuch less worthless than most eunuchs. He became a very clever surgeon
and physician, and endeared himself to Quadratus by many cures among his
countless slaves, and even among his kin. Quadratus made him his chief
physician and trusted him utterly. Naturally he let him set up an
establishment of his own, allowing him to select a location. Hyacinthus,
for that is the eunuch's name, instead of choosing for a home any one of a
dozen desirable neighborhoods well within his means with the liberal
allowance Quadratus gave him, settled in a peculiarly vile slum, because,
as he said, his associates mostly lived there; meaning by his associates
the votaries of some sort of Syrian cult, chiefly peddlers and such,
living like ants or maggots, all packed together in the rookeries of that
quarter.

"Hyacinthus was not only a member of their sect, but their hierophant, or
whatever they call it, and presided at the ceremonies of their religion at
their little temple somewhere in the same part of the city.

"He divided his energies between his calling of surgeon, at which he
prospered amazingly, and his avocation of hierophant.

"As head of their cult it fell to him to care for the orphans of their
poorer families and for foundlings, for such Asiatics never expose infants
or fail to succor exposed infants.

"Marcia was a foundling and brought up by Hyacinthus, therefore, legally a
slave of Quadratus.

"Quadratus saw her and took a fancy to her. He had her taught not only
dancing, music and such accomplishments, but had her educated almost as if
she had been his niece or daughter.

"When she was yet but a half-grown girl, she had acquired such a hold on
him that he used to bewail it. What was it he said, Hedulio?"

"I have heard him say to my uncle," I said, "that Marcia was as imperious
as if she were Empress and that living with her was as bad as being
married. Quadratus was born to be a bachelor and never thought of
matrimony. But though he had solaced himself with a long series of
beauties in all previous cases his word had been law and not one of his
concubines had had any will of her own. Marcia's word was law to him, even
her tone or look. She had wheedled him into lavishing on her flowers,
perfumery, jewels, an incredibly varied and costly wardrobe, maids,
masseuses, bathgirls, a mob of waiters, cooks, doorkeepers, litter-bearers
and what not and the most costly equipages.

"He groaned, but was too infatuated to deny her anything.

"My uncle sympathized with him and, with the idea of disabusing him of his
folly, somehow, while visiting him, saw Marcia.

"Uncle at once fell madly in love with her.

"He offered to buy her.

"That was just before Quadratus became involved in the intrigues radiating
from Lucilla's conspiracy, was implicated in the conspiracy itself and so
disgraced and executed.

"Marcia seems to have had some prevision or inkling of what was coming.
Anyhow she could not have acted more for her own interest if she had had
accurate information of what was impending. She cajoled Uncle into buying
her and coaxed Quadratus into selling her.

"'Take her,' Quadratus told him, 'at your own price. If you don't or if
somebody else don't free me from this vampire, I'll be fool enough to
manumit her and marry her as soon as she is free!'

"Uncle brought her up here.

"Did she wail at leaving Rome and mourn over seclusion in our hills? Not
she.

"She made as big a fool of Uncle as she had of Quadratus.

"He, with his ill health and his frequent illnesses, got as much
satisfaction out of Marcia as a blind man would get from a painting. But
he indulged her far beyond his means. He gave her the little west villa
for her home, and a small horde of servants. She wheedled him into freeing
her and then, from the day she was freed, set herself to marry and marry
well. She had every bachelor and widower hereabouts visiting her, dangling
about her, competing for her smiles, showering gifts on her, soliciting
her favor!

"When they found, one by one, that the only road to her favors was by
matrimony, they sheered off in terror, one by one.

"She nearly married Vedius Caspo, came almost as near with Satronius
Sabinus.

"Then, when she saw no hope left of a senator, she almost landed Hirnio,
tried to marry Uncle, and tried to marry me."

"And just missed all three," said Hirnio, fervently. "I am still equally
congratulating myself on my escape and wondering over it. I was sure
Andivius would marry her, sure of it until his last illness made it
impossible. And I feared for our Hedulio here.

"The only man hereabouts whom she did not try to marry was Ducconius
Furfur. She had made eyes at his father, and Ducconius was precious afraid
she would be his stepmother. At first he railed at her. Then, just before
his father's death, it was manifest to everybody that he was yielding to
her fascinations, himself. Hardly was old Ducconius buried when young
Furfur lost his head completely and fell madly in love with Marcia. She
could have married him easily; in fact, he offered marriage, not only to
her in private, but before witnesses. She, for some reason, would not hear
of marrying him. In fact, Furfur, it seems, was the only bachelor
hereabouts whom she was unwilling to marry. She flouted him, derided him,
and finally forbade him her house and ordered him never to dare to
approach her. He kept away, sulky and morose and low-spirited.

"After that episode she had a go at Muso, the only other bachelor among us
seven.

"Finally she fastened on Marcus Martius, who is not quite as rich as Muso,
but yet comfortably well off. She married him day before yesterday."

"Thanks be to Hercules," Tanno cried, "that I have never set eyes on the
jade. I'm for matrimony only with an heiress of my own class and only with
such an heiress as I personally fancy. No matrimony for me otherwise."

With this the party broke up. We all went out on the terrace. My six
neighbors mounted and cantered off on their various roads home; Tanno,
Hirnio and I went in and to bed.




CHAPTER V

ENCOUNTERS


Next morning I was wakened by a dash of cold water over me and sat up in
bed dripping and angry. Tanno was bending over me.

"I had to souse you," he explained. "I've been shaking you and yelling at
you and you stayed as fast asleep as before I touched you. Get up and
let's start for Rome."

We enjoyed a brief rubdown and after Entedius joined us each relished a
small cup of mulled wine and one of Ofatulena's delicious little hot,
crisp rolls.

In the east courtyard we found our equipages and I descried my tenants
outside the gate, all horsed and each muffled in a close rain-cloak,
topped off by a big umbrella hat, its wide brim dripping all round its
edge, for the weather was atrocious; foggy mist blanketing all the world
under a gray sky from which descended a thin, chilly drizzle.

Hirnio was inspecting Tanno's litter and chatting with Tanno about it.

"Never saw one with poles like this," he said. "All I have seen had one
long pole on each side, a continuous bar of wood from end to end. What's
the idea of four poles, half poles you might call them, two on a side?"

"You see," Tanno explained, "It is far harder to get sound, flawless,
perfect poles full length. Then, too, full-length spare poles are very
bothersome and inconvenient to carry. With a litter equipped in this
fashion one man can carry a spare pole, and they are much easier and
quicker to put in if a pole snaps."

"I should think," Hirnio remarked, "that the half-poles would pull out of
the sockets."

"Not a bit," said Tanno, "they clamp in at the end, this way. See? The
clamps fasten instantly and release at a touch, but hold tenaciously when
shut."

Under the arcade my household had gathered to say farewell and wish me
good luck. I spoke briefly to each and thanked Ofatulena for her
distinguished cookery, both in respect to the credit her masterpieces had
done me at dinner and also for the taste of her rolls, which yet lingered
in mouth and memory. Tanno also expressed his admiration of her powers.

Last I said farewell to my old nurse and foster mother Uturia, who, when I
was scarcely a year old, had closed the eyes of my dying mother, and not
much later of my father, and who had not merely suckled me, but had been
almost as my real mother to me in my childhood.

She could not keep back her tears, as always at our partings; the more as
she had had dreams the night before and she took her dreams very
seriously.

"Deary," she sobbed, "it has been revealed to me that you go into great
perils when you set out to-day. I saw danger all about you, danger from
men and danger from beasts. Beware of strangers, of narrow streets, of
walled gardens, of plots, of secret conferences. All these threaten you
especially."

I kissed her as heartily as if she had been my own mother.

"Don't worry, Uturia," I said, "as long as I live I'll take care of you
and if I die you shall be a free woman with a cottage and garden and three
slaves of your own."

But she only sobbed harder, both as she clung to me and after I had
mounted.

Tanno, of course, rolled into his litter and slid the panels against the
rain. His bearers were muffled up precisely like my tenants. So was
Tanno's intendant, so was Hirnio, so was I. The entire caravan was a mere
column of horses, cloaks and hats, not a man visible, all the faces hid
under the flapping hat-brims, no man recognizable.

Hirnio and I led, next came Tanno in his litter, then his extra bearers,
next his intendant on horseback, then my nine tenants, each horsed and
leading a pack-mule, last the mounted servants, Tanno's, Hirnio's and
mine, similarly leading pack-mules, in all twenty-seven men afoot, sixteen
mounted and twelve led mules.

As we strung out Tanno called to me:

"Luck for us if we don't blunder into one of those ambushes we heard about
at dinner last night. With all this cavalcade everybody we meet cannot
fail to conjecture that so large a party can only be from either Villa
Vedia or Villa Satronia, such an escort misbefits anyone not of senatorial
rank. If we do blunder into an ambush either side will know we are not
their men and will assume we are of the other party. No one can recognize
anybody in this wet-weather rig. Any ambush will attack first and
investigate afterwards or not at all."

Had I heeded his chance words I might, even then, have saved myself. But
while my ears heard him my wits were deaf. I called back:

"There are no ambushes. Each side spreads such rumors to discredit the
other, but neither so much as thinks of ambush. If Xantha or Greia is
located, the clan concerned for her freedom will gather a rescue-party and
there may be fight over her, but there are no ambushes."

At the foot of my road Hirnio and I turned to our left. Tanno from his
litter emitted a howl of protest.

"Nothing," he yelled, "will induce me to traverse that road again. I told
you so. You promised to take the other road. What do you mean?"

"Don't worry, Opsitius," Hirnio reassured him. "We turned instinctively
according to habit. You shall have your way. It is not much farther by the
other road."

"Anyhow," I added, "Martius is not in sight. He was to have been here
before us. If we went this way we should have to wait for him. If we go
the other we shall most likely meet him at the fork of the road."

We turned to our right towards Villa Vedia and Vediamnum. About half way
to the entrance to Villa Vedia, at the top of the hill between the two
bridges, the rain for a brief interval fairly cascaded from the sky.
During this temporary downpour, as we splashed along, we saw loom out of
the rain, fog and mist the outline of what might have been an equestrian
statue, but which, as we drew up to it, we found a horse and rider,
stationary and motionless to the south of the road, on a tiny knoll,
facing the road and so close to it that I might have put out my right hand
and touched the horse's nose as we passed.

Like everyone in our convoy the rider was enveloped in a rain-cloak and
his head and face hidden under a wide-brimmed umbrella hat. He saluted as
I came abreast of him, but his salutation was merely a perfunctory wave of
a hand, an all-but-imperceptible nod and an inarticulate grunt.

I barely caught a glimpse of his face, but I made sure he was no one I had
ever seen before and equally sure that he was not a Sabine.

When we reached the entrance of Villa Vedia, which was also the crossroad
down which Marcus Martius and his bride must come, there was no sign of a
travelling carriage, nor any fresh ruts in the road.

We halted and peered into the mist. Nothing was in sight on the road, but
there was a stir in the bushes by the roadside. Out of them appeared a
bare head, with a shock of tousled, matted, rain-soaked gray hair, a
hatchet face, brow like a bare skull, bleared eyes, far apart and deepset
on either side of a sharp hooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey,
high cheekbones under the thin, dry, tight-drawn skin above the sunken
cheeks, a wide, thin-lipped mouth and a chin like a ship's prow. The rain
trickled down the face.

Up it rose, till there was visible under it a lean stringy neck, a
tattered garment, and the outline of a gaunt, emaciated body, that of a
tall, spare, half-starved old woman.

I recognized the Aemilian Sibyl, as all the countryside called her, an old
crone who had, since before the memory of our oldest patriarchs, lived in
a cave in the woods on the Aemilian Estate, supported by the gifts doled
out to her by the kindness, respect or fear of the slaves and peasantry
living nearest her abode, for she had a local reputation for magical
powers in the way of spells to cure or curse, charms for wealth or health,
love philtres, fortune-telling, prophecy and good advice on all subjects
likely to cause uncertainty of mind in farm-life.

She towered out of the dripping shrubberies and pointed a long skinny
finger at me.

"I know you under your cloak and hat, Hedulio," she wheezed. "Well for you
if younger folk than I had such, eyes in their heads as I have in my
spirit. I know you, Andivius Hedulio. You turn your face towards Reate,
but you shall never see Reate this day. You might as well take the road to
Rome and be done with it, for to Rome you shall go, whether you will or
not. Whether you will or not, whatever road your feet take, you will find
it leads you to Rome, whatever ship you take, no matter to what port she
steers, will land you at Rome's Wharf. They say all roads lead to Rome.
For you, in truth, every road leads to Rome, whether you face towards Rome
or away from Rome.

"Be warned! Yield to your fate! If you would have luck, go to Rome, abide
in Rome; and if you must leave Rome, return to Rome.

"And hearken to my words, let them sink deep into your mind, remember them
and heed them; beware of a man with a hooked nose, beware of secret
conferences, beware of  plots, walled gardens, beware of narrow streets,
for these will be your undoing."

Agathemer had edged his horse along the roadside the length of our
cavalcade and had joined me. He dismounted, strode to the hag and held out
his hand to her, some silver pieces on its palm, saying:

"My master thanks you for your warning and offers you these as a guerdon."

"Greek!" she screamed. "I warn not for guerdons, but at the behest of the
God of Prophecy. Begone with your silver! Silver I scorn and gold and all
the treasures of mankind's folly and all the joys of mankind's life. I am
the Sibyl!"

And she tramped off through the crackling underbrush till the trees hid
her and the noise of her going died away, till she was so far off that we
heard the rain drops drip from the boughs and the horses fret at their
bits.

So at a standstill, as we stared expectantly up the crossroad, we saw come
into sight, not a travelling carriage, but a horseman, looming huge out of
the fog, a vast bulk of a man on a big black horse like a farm work-horse.

He drew rein and saluted civilly, tilting up his hat. His face was ruddy,
his eyes blue, his expression that of a mountaineer from a village or
small town.

"I have lost my way," he said. "My name is Murmex Lucro. I come from
Nersae and am bound for Rome. I was told of a short cut that should have
brought me out on the Salarian Road near Trebula. But I must have taken a
wrong turn, for I was wholly at a loss at dusk yesterday and so camped in
the woods by a spring. I have not met a human being since daylight. Where
am I and how can I reach the Via Salaria?"

"You are not far from it," Hirnio told him. "We are bound for Rome and if
you join us you can reach Via Salaria with us by the road on which we are
going. Should you prefer to follow the road along which we have come,
which is rough, but less roundabout, you can, by taking every turn to the
right, reach the Via Salaria some miles nearer Rome than where our road
will bring us out on it."

"I'll join your cavalcade, if you have no objection," the stranger said.

Hirnio and I expressed our entire willingness to have his company.

Hirnio asked him:

"Are you in any way related to Murmex Frugi?"

"He was my father," Murmex replied, simply.

"Was!" Hirnio repeated. "The word strikes ominously on my ear. Someone
from this neighborhood, I forget who, was in Nersae since the roads became
fit for travelling this spring and returned from there, or perhaps some
wayfarer from Nersae stopped with someone hereabouts. At any rate we heard
he had seen Murmex Frugi still hale and sound, even at his advanced age."

"My father," said Murmex, "was still hale and sound on the Kalends of May
and for a day or two thereafter. He fell ill with a cough and fever, and
died after only two nights' illness, on the Nones of May, barely more than
a month ago."

"He lived to a green old age," said Hirnio, "and must have enjoyed every
moment of his life."

"He seemed to," said Murmex.

"And I conjecture," I put in, "that he was proud of his son."

"He seemed so," Murmex admitted, "but he was never a tenth as proud of me
as I of him."

"It is an honor," I said, "to be the son of the greatest gladiator of our
fathers' days, of the man esteemed the best swordsman Italy ever saw live
out his term of service and live to retire on his savings."

"It is," Murmex said, as simply as before.

Here we were interrupted by a yell from Tanno, as he leaned out of his
litter.

"Are we going to take root here," he bawled, "like Phaethon's sisters? We
were supposed to be journeying to Rome. We appear to be bound for Hades;
we shall certainly reach it if we continue sinking into your Sabine mud!"

"Martius agreed to wait for me, if I was late," I shouted back to him. "I
agreed to wait for him; I keep my word. If you choose, we'll get out of
your way and let you pass on. We can catch up with you."

"Bah!" he roared. "No going it alone on a Sabine road for me! I'm tied to
you hand and foot. But this waiting in the rain is no fun! Did you notice
that man on horseback we passed on the road?"

"I did," I called back.

"Do you know who he is?"

"Never set eyes on him before," I replied.

"Do you know what he is?"

"No," I answered, "I do not. What is he, according to your conjecture?"

"I'm not depending on any conjectures," Tanno bellowed, "I know to a
certainty."

"Then tell us," I called.

"Not here!" cried Tanno. "I'll tell you later."

He pulled his head inside his litter.

We again stared up the crossroad. Nothing was in sight.

"It seems to me," Hirnio again addressed Murmex, "that not only your
father was a Nersian, but also Pacideianus and that I have heard that he
also was living in retirement at Nersae."

"He is yet," rejoined Murmex, laconically.

"Then you know him?" Hirnio queried.

"My mother," said Murmex, "is his sister."

"Your uncle!" cried Hirnio, "son to one of the two greatest retired
gladiators in Italy, nephew to the other! Living in the same town with
them! Did either of them ever teach you anything of sword play?"

"Both of them," said Murmex, "taught me everything they knew of sword
play, from the day I could hold a toy lath sword."

"Hercules!" I cried, "and what did they say of your proficiency?"

"My father with his last breath," said Murmex solemnly, "and my uncle
Pacideianus as he bade me farewell, told me that I am the best swordsman
alive."

"Why have you never," I asked, "tried your luck in the arena?"

"My father forbade me," Murmex explained. "He bade me wait. He trowed a
grown man was worth ten growing lads, and he said so and stuck to that. On
his death-bed he told me I was almost seasoned. After we buried him I felt
I could abide Nersae no longer. Uncle agreed with me that I had best
follow my instincts. I fare to Rome to seek my fortune as a swordsman on
the sand in the amphitheatres."

"You have fallen into good company," I said, "for I can bring you at once
to the Emperor's notice."

"I should be most grateful," said Murmex.

At that instant we heard an halloo from the road and saw a horseman appear
out of the mist, then a travelling carriage behind him. It was Martius.
When he was near enough I could see his grave, handsome, mediocre face far
back in the carriage, and beside it Marcia's; small, delicate, shell-pink,
her intense blue eyes bright even in that blurred gloomy daylight, shining
close together over her little aquiline nose.

We conferred and he agreed to fall in behind Tanno's extra bearers,
between them and my farmers, Tanno's intendant getting in front of the
litter where he normally belonged.

We got properly into line as arranged and plodded on down the road.

Just outside of Vediamnum was, as Tanno had related, the village idiot,
guarding his flock of goats. He mowed and gibbered at us and then spoke
some intelligible words, as he occasionally did.

"I know you, Hedulio," he called. "You can't hide yourself under that hat
nor inside that raincloak. I know you, Hedulio. But nobody but an idiot
would ever recognize you inside that rig and with all this escort. I know
you, you aren't Vedius Vindex, you aren't Satronius Sabinus. You're
Andivius Hedulio. I know you. But nobody else will guess who you are.
Nobody else around here is an idiot!"

Again, as with Tanno's utterance when we were leaving my villa, the words
fell on my ears but did not penetrate to my thinking consciousness. Had I
noted what I heard, had I thought instantaneously of what the idiot's
words really signified, I might even then have saved myself.

We plodded on, a long cavalcade of horsemen and bevy of men afoot,
convoying a shut litter and a closed travelling carriage.

Round the turn of the road, after passing the idiot and his goats, with
the brawling stream of the Bran Brook, now swollen to a respectable little
river, on our left, with the wooded hills rising on our right, we entered
the long, narrow winding single street of Vediamnum, a paved lane along
the close-crowded tall stone houses built against the hillside on the
northeast, with the stream along it to the southwest, and houses wedged
between the street and the stream, brokenly, for about half of its length,
with open intervals between.

As we entered the village I saw ahead on the street not a human form, saw
no face at any door of any house. I wondered over this, wondered
uncomprehendingly. I had never seen the street of Vediamnum. wholly
deserted, not even in rains much harder than that which descended on us.
Still wondering, still uncomprehending, when we were far enough into the
village for the travelling carriage to be already between the first
houses, I saw fall across the roadway, in front of me, two stout trunks of
trimmed trees, straight like pine trees; I heard the crash as they jarred
on the stones of the stream-side wall, I saw them quiver as they settled;
breast high and shoulder high from house-wall to house-wall, effectually
blocking the highway.

At the same instant there sounded a chorus of yells, shouts, calls, cheers
and commands; and men poured out of the house doors, out of the alleys
between the houses, up the river bank in the unbuilt intervals; men
hatless and cloakless, clad only in their tunics, men with clubs, with
staffs, with staves, with bludgeons, with cudgels, men yelling:

"Greia! Greia! Rescue Greia! Club 'em! Brain 'em! Chase 'em! Vedius
forever! At 'em boys! Mustard's the word! Make 'em run! Rescue Posis!"

They clubbed us. They clubbed the horses, they clubbed the mules, they
clubbed the bearers and their reliefs. They gave us no time to explain,
and though I yelled out who I was and who was with me, though Hirnio and
Tanno and Martius yelled similarly, their explanations were unheard in the
hubbub or unheeded. Also our effort to explain was brief. Swathed as we
were in our cloaks the hot gush of rage that flamed up in us drove us
instinctively to free our arms and fight.

Now anyone might suppose that it would be an easy matter for some eighteen
horsemen to ride down and scatter a mob of varlets afoot. So it would be
in the open, when the riders were aware of the attack and ready to meet
it. We were taken wholly by surprise whereas our assailants were ready and
agreed. For a moment it looked like a rout for us, our horses and mules
rearing and kicking, our whole caravan in confusion, jammed together
higgledy-piggledy, with all our attackers headed for the carriage,
mistaking Marcia for Greia.

Marcia never screamed, never moved, sat still and silent, apparently calm
and placid.

They all but dragged her out of the carriage.

In fact we should indubitably have been frightfully mauled and Marcia
carried off had it not been for Murmex and Tanno.

At first onset Tanno had yelled explanations; but almost with his first
yell he rolled out of his litter, snatched a spare pole from a relief, and
with it laid about him; Murmex did the like. The two of them, one on the
right of the litter and carriage, the other on the left, bore the whole
shock of our attackers' first rush and alone delayed it.

Somehow, probably by Tanno's orders, perhaps by their own instincts, the
reliefs with the other poles handed them to Hirnio and me as we
dismounted. Three of the clever blacks caught our horses and Murmex's.
Others detached the poles from the litter and the four biggest bearers
seized them and used them vigorously.

Thus, actually quicker than it takes to tell of it, eight powerful,
skillful and justly incensed men on our side were plying litter poles
against the cudgels of our attackers.

I was severely bruised before I warmed up to my work; when I did warm up I
laid a man flat with every blow of the pole I wielded.

When my adversaries had had a sufficient taste of my skill to cause them
to draw away from me, as far as they could in that press of men, horses
and mules, and I had cleared a space around me, I looked about.

Agathemer, light built as he was, had wrenched a bludgeon from some Vedian
and was wielding it not ineffectually.

Hirnio was doing his part in the fighting like a gentleman and an expert.

But Murmex and Tanno chiefly caught my eye.

It was wonderful to see Tanno fight. Every swing of his pole cracked on a
skull. Men fell about him by twos and threes, one on the other.

If Tanno was wonderful Murmex was marvellous. Never had I seen a man
handle a staff so rapidly and effectively.

By this time my nine tenants were afoot, and uncloaked. Now a Sabine
farmer, afoot or horsed, is never without his trusty staff of yew or holly
or thorn. These the nine used to admiration, if less miraculously than
Tanno and Murmex.

Since there were now a round dozen skilled fencers plying their staffs on
our side, and four huge and mighty Nubians doing their best (with no mean
skill of their own, either) to assist us, we soon were on the way to
victory.

The remnant of our adversaries still on their feet fled; fled up the
alleys between the houses, into the houses, down the bank towards the
stream or into the stream, over the barricade of the twin logs.

That barricade made it impossible for us to go on. The number of men laid
low, some of whom were reviving from their stunned condition and crawling
or staggering away from under the hoofs of the crazed horses and mules,
made it unthinkable that any explanation of the mistake which had led to
the fracas could be possible, or if possible, that explanation could
quench the fires of animosity which blazed in the breasts of all
concerned.

With one accord, without any conference or the exchange of a word, our
party made haste to escape from Vediamnum before our assailants rallied
for a second onset. No horse or mule was hamstrung or lamed, no man had
been knocked senseless. All of us were more or less bruised and sore, some
were bleeding, two of my tenants had blood pouring from torn scalps, but
every man, horse and mule was fit to travel.

We carried, lifted, dragged or rolled out of the way the disabled Vedians
in the roadbed, making sure that not one was killed, we somehow got the
travelling carriage turned round, no small feat in that narrow space; we
readjusted the litter-poles, Tanno climbed in, Hirnio and Murmex and I
mounted, Tanno's extra litter bearers led my farmers' horses and mules and
we set off on our retreat, my nine tenants, even with two of them half
scalped, forming a rearguard of entirely competent bludgeoners; certainly
they must have impressed the Vedians as adequate, for no face so much as
showed at a doorway until we were clear of the village and my tenants
remounted. Then came a few derisive yells after us as the mist cut off our
view of the nearest houses.

We made haste, you may be sure. Outside of the village we passed the idiot
and his goats. He mowed and grinned at us, but uttered no word. We saw no
other human figure till we had passed the entrance to Villa Vedia and felt
safer. Nor did we pass anyone between that cross-road and the foot of my
road, save only the same immobile horseman on the same knoll, in the same
position, and, apparently, at precisely the same spot, as if he were
indeed an equestrian statue. His salutation was as curt as before.

At the foot of my road we held a consultation. Hirnio advised returning to
my villa and demanding an apology from Vedius, even instituting legal
proceedings at Reate if he did not make an apology and enter a disclaimer.
But Tanno, Martius and all my tenants, even the two with cracked heads,
were for going on, and, of course, Murmex, who talked as if he had been a
member of our company from the first.

"Hercules be good to me," Tanno cried, "to get out of this cursed
neighborhood I am willing even to face the horrors of the bit of road I
suffered on as I came up. Let us be off on our road to Rome."

"With all my heart," I said. "But first tell me who or what is that
voiceless and moveless horseman we passed twice between here and the
crossroads. You said you knew."

"I do know," Tanno grunted, "and I'm not fool enough to blurt it out on a
country road, either. Let's be off. Attention! Form ranks! Ready! Forward!
March!"

Off we set, ordering our caravan as at first, except that Agathemer rode
by me, with Hirnio and Murmex in advance.

We plodded down the muddy road, through the fine, continuous drizzle,
wrapped in our cloaks, all the world about us helmed in fog, mist and
rain, the trees looming blurred and gray-green in the wet air.

Without meeting any wayfarers, with little talk among ourselves, we had
passed the entrance to Villa Satronia and were no great distance from the
Salarian Highway, when, where the road traversed a dense bit of woodland,
the trees of which met overhead, the underbrush on both sides of the road
suddenly rang with yells and was alive with excited men.

It was almost the duplicate of our experience in Vediamnum, save that our
assailants were more numerous and shouted:

"Xantha, Xantha, rescue Xantha!"

"Satronius forever! Eat 'em alive, boys! Get Xantha! Get Xantha!" and such
like calls.

This time we had an infinitesimally longer warning, as the bushes to right
and left of the road were further apart than had been the houses lining
the streets of Vediamnum; also we reacted more quickly to the yells,
having heard the like such a short time before.

The fight was fully joined all along the line and was raging with no
advantage for either side, when I missed a parry and knew no more.

Afterwards I was told that I fell stunned from a blow on the head and lay,
bleeding not only from a terrific scalp wound but also from a dozen other
abrasions, until the fight was over, our assailants routed and completely
put to flight, and Tanno with the rest of the pursuers returned to the
travelling carriage and litter to find Marcia, pink and pretty and placid,
seated as she had been when she left home, and me, weltering in a pool of
blood.

A dozen Satronians lay stunned. Tanno reckoned two of them dead men.

I was the only man seriously hurt on our side.

Agathemer was for convoying me home.

Tanno hooted at the idea, expatiating on the distance from Reate and the
improbability of such a town harboring a competent physician, on the
number of excellent surgeons in Rome, on the advisability of getting me
out of the locality afflicted with our Vedian-Satronian feud, and so on.

He had me bandaged as best might be and composed in his litter.

He took my horse.

To me the journey to Rome was and is a complete blank. I was mostly
insensible, and, when I showed signs of consciousness, was delirious. I
recall nothing except a vague sense of endless pain, misery and horror. I
have no memory of anything that occurred on the road after I was hit on
the head, nor of the first night at Vicus Novus nor of the second at
Eretum. I first came to myself about the tenth hour of the third day, when
we were but a short distance from Rome and in full sight of it.  The view
of Rome, from any eminence outside the city from which a view of it may be
had, has always seemed to me the most glorious spectacle upon which a
Roman may feast his eyes. As a boy my tutors had yielded to my
importunities and had escorted me to every one of those elevations near
the city famous as viewpoints. As a lad I had ridden out to each many
times, whenever the weather promised a fine view, to delight my soul with
the aspect of the great city citizenship in which was my dearest heritage.
To have been born a Roman was my chief pride; to gaze at Rome, to exult at
the beauty of Rome, was my keenest delight.

More even than the acclaimed viewpoints, to which residents like me and
visitors from all the world flocked on fine afternoons, did I esteem those
places on the roads radiating from Rome where a traveller faring Romeward
caught his first sight of the city; or those points where, if one road had
several hill-crests in succession, one had the best view possible anywhere
along the road.

Of the various roads entering Rome it always appeared to my judgment that
the Tiburtine Highway afforded the most charming views of the city.

But, along the Salarian Highway, are several rises at the top of each of
which one sees a fascinating picture when looking towards Rome. Of these
my favorite was that from the crest of the ascent after one crosses the
Anio, just after passing Antemnae, near the third milestone.

This view I love now as I have always loved it, as I loved it when a boy.
To halt on that crest of the road, of a fair, still, mild, brilliant
afternoon when the sun is already visibly declining and its rays fall
slanting and mellow; to view the great city bathed in the warm, even
light, its pinnacles, tower-roofs, domes, and roof-tiles flashing and
sparkling in the late sunshine, all of it radiant with the magical glow of
an Italian afternoon, to see Rome so vast, so grandiose, so majestic, so
winsome, so lovely; to know that one owns one's share in Rome, that one is
part of Rome; that, I conceive, confers the keenest joy of which the human
heart is capable.

It so happened that Tanno had his litter opened, that I might get all the
air possible, and the curtains looped back tightly. Somehow, at the very
crest of that rise on the Salarian Road, on a perfect afternoon, about the
tenth hour, I came to myself.

I was aching in every limb and joint, I was sore over every inch of my
surface, I was all one jelly of bruises, my head and my left shin hurt me
acutely. More than all that I was permeated by that nameless horror which
comes from weakness and a high fever.

Now it would be impossible to convey, by any human words, the strangeness
of my sensations. My sufferings, my illness, my distress of mind enveloped
me and permeated me with a general misery in which I could not but loathe
life, the world and anything I saw, and I saw before me the most
magnificent, the most noble, the most inspiriting sight the world affords.

At the instant of reviving I was overwhelmed by my sensations, by my
recollections of the two fights and of all they meant to me of misfortune
and disaster, and I was more than overwhelmed by the glory spread before
me. I went all hot and cold inside and all through me and lost
consciousness.

After this lapse I was not conscious of anything until I began to be dimly
aware that I was in my own bed in my own bedroom, in my own house and
tended by my own personal servants.

Strangely enough this second awakening was as different as possible from
my momentary revival near Antemnae. Then I had been appalled by the rush
of varying sensations, crowding memories, conflicting emotions and
daunting forebodings, each of which seemed as distinct, vivid and keen as
every other of the uncountable swarm of impressions: I had felt acutely
and cared extremely. Now every memory and sensation was blurred, no
thought of the future intruded, I accepted without internal questionings
whatever was done for me, and lay semi-conscious, incurious and
indifferent. Mostly I dozed half-conscious. I was almost in a stupor, at
peace with myself and all the world, wretched, yet acquiescing in my
wretchedness, not rebellious nor recalcitrant.

This semi-stupor gradually wore off, my half-consciousness between long
sleeps growing less and less blurred, my faculties more alive, my
personality emerging.

When I came entirely to myself I found Tanno seated by my bed.

"You're all right now, Caius," he said, "I have kept away till Galen said
you were well enough for me to talk to you."

"Galen?" I repeated, "have I been as ill as all that?"

"Not ill," Tanno disclaimed, "merely bruised. You are certainly a portent
in a fight. I never saw you fight before, never saw you practice at really
serious fencing, never heard anybody speak of you as an expert, or as a
fighter. But I take oath I never saw a man handle a stave as you did. You
were quicker than lightning, you seemed in ten places at once, you were as
reckless as a Fury and as effectual as a thunderbolt. You laid men out by
twos and threes. But jammed as you were in a press of enemies you were hit
often and hard, so often and so hard that, after you were downed by a blow
on the head, you never came to until I had you where you are."

"Yes I did," I protested, "I came to on the hilltop this side of
Antemnae."

"Not enough to tell any of us about it," he soothed me. "Anyhow, you are
mending now and will soon be yourself."

I was indifferent. My mind was not yet half awake.

"Did I fight as well as you say?" I asked, "or are you flattering me?"

"No flattery, my boy," he said. "You are a portent."

Then he told me of the result of the fight with the Satronians, of their
complete discomfiture and rout, of how he had brought me to Rome, seen me
properly attended and looked after my tenants.

"They are having the best time," he said, "they ever had in all their
lives."

And he told me where he had them lodged and which sights of Rome they had
seen from day to day.

"Just as soon as I had seen to you and them," he said, "I called on dear
old Nemestronia and told her of your condition. She is full of solicitude
for you and will overwhelm you with dainties as soon as you are well
enough to relish any."

He did not mention Vedia and I was still too dazed, too numb, too weak,
too acquiescent to ask after her, or even to think of asking after her or
to notice that he had not mentioned her.

"While I was talking to Nemestronia," Tanno said, "I took care to warn her
about that cursed leopard. She would not agree to cage it, at least not
permanently. She did agree to cage it at night and said she would not let
it have the run of her palace even by day, as it has since she first got
it, but would keep it shut up in the shrubbery garden, as she calls it,
where they usually feed it and where you and I have seen it crawl up on
its victims and pounce on them."

I could not be interested in leopards, or Nemestronia or even in Vedia, if
he had mentioned Vedia. I fell into a half doze. Just on the point of
going fast asleep I half roused, queerly enough.

"Caius!" I asked, "do you remember that man on horseback we passed in the
rain between my road entrance and Vediamnum?"

"You can wager your estate I remember him!" Tanno replied.

"What sort of man was he?" I queried, struggling with my tendency to
sleep. "You said you knew."

"I do know," Tanno asserted, "I cannot identify him, though I have
questioned those who should know and who are safe. I should know his name,
but I cannot recall it or place him. But I know his occupation. He is a
professional informer in the employ of the palace secret service, an
Imperial spy.

"Now what in the name of Mercury was he doing in the rain, on a Sabine
roadside? I cannot conjecture."

This should have roused me staring wide awake.

But I was too exhausted to take any normal interest in anything.

"I can't conjecture either," I drawled thickly.




CHAPTER VI

A RATHER BAD DAY


Next morning, strangely enough, I wakened at my normal, habitual time for
wakening when in town, and wakened feeling weak indeed and still sore in
places, but entirely myself in general and filled with a sort of sham
energy and spurious vigor.

By me, when I woke, was Occo, my soft-voiced, noiseless-footed, deft-
handed personal attendant. At my bidding he summoned Agathemer. When I
told him that I proposed to get up, dress and go out as I usually did when
in Rome, in fact that I intended to follow the conventional and
fashionable daily routine to which I had been habituated, he protested
vigorously. He said that both Celsianus and Galen, the two most acclaimed
physicians in Rome, who had been called in in consultation by my own
physician, but also he himself, had enjoined most emphatically that I must
remain abed for some days yet, must keep indoors for many days more, if I
was to continue on the road to recovery on which their ministrations had
set me, and that all three had bidden him tell me that any transgression
of their instructions would expose me to the probability of a relapse far
more serious than my initial illness and to a far longer period of
inactivity.

I was determined and obstinate. When he added that I must not only remain
quiet, but must not talk for any length of time nor concern myself with
any news or any matters likely to excite me, I revolted. I commanded him
to obey me and to be silent as to the physicians' orders.

I began by asking him what day it was. I then learned that I had been ill
fifteen days since reaching Rome, for I had left my villa on the eighth
day before the Ides of June and it was now the ninth day before the
Kalends of July.

Next I asked after my tenants. Agathemer said that they had most dutifully
presented themselves each morning to salute me and attend my reception, if
I should be well enough to hold one; to ask after my progress towards
recovery if I was not; that Ligo Atrior, as recognized leader among them,
had also come each evening between bath-time and dinner-time to ask
personally after my condition; that, as all the physicians had, the day
before, stated that I must by no means be allowed to see anyone save Tanno
or to leave my bedroom, for some days, he had told Ligo the evening before
not to diminish his and his fellows' time for sight-seeing by coming on
this particular morning; that Ligo had expressed his unalterable intention
of coming each evening in any case.

I commended Agathemer's discretion but told him to tell Ligo, when he came
in the afternoon, that I intended to hold a reception next morning and
wanted to see all nine of them at it.

I then asked about Murmex. Agathemer said that Tanno had offered to bring
him to the Emperor's notice, but that Murmex had declined, thanking him,
but remarking that, as I had offered to bring him to the Emperor's notice,
it would be bad manners on his part to appear under the countenance of any
other patron and would moreover be inviting bad luck instead of good luck
on his presentation.

Agathemer said Murmex had called twice to ask after me and had told him
where he lodged. I instructed him to apprise Murmex of my intention to
hold a morning reception. I knew Agathemer would send out notifications to
all my city clients of long standing without any admonition of mine.

He told me that no message of any kind had come from Vedia nor from Vedius
Vedianus, the head of her clan, nor from Satronius Satro. I could not
conjecture just why Vedia had remained silent, and I was not only worried
over the fact of her silence and aloofness, but felt myself wearied, even
after a very short time, by the uncontrollable turmoil of my mind,
puzzling as to why she had ignored me.

As to Vedius and Satronius, I was vividly aware of their state of mind and
acutely wretched over it.

Only nineteen days before I had seen my _triclinium_ walled and floored
with flowers presented by the local leader of one clan; had seen my dinner
table groan under the fruit sent me by the local leader of the other clan,
had known that both clans were competing for my favor and that I was high
in the good graces of each.

Now I felt that all men of both clans must be bitterly incensed with me,
for I knew their clan-pride. No man of either clan would weigh the facts:
that neither fight had been of my seeking; that both fights had been
forced on me; that I could not by any exercise of ingenuity have avoided
either, once the onset began; that each had been the result of the
headlong impetuosity and self-deception of my assailants, that both were
the outcome of conditions which I could not be expected to recognize as
dangerous beforehand, of a mistake not of my causing, for which I was in
no way to blame. I knew that every man of both clans, and most of all the
head of each clan, would consider nothing except that I had participated
in a roadside brawl in which men of their clan had been roughly handled,
some of them by me personally, and from which their men had fled in
confusion, routed partly by my participation.

I saw myself embroiled with both clans, conjectured that the two fights
were the staple of the clan gossip on both sides, and that animosity
against me was increasing from day to day. I felt impelled to state my
case to both Vedius and Satronius, but I knew that even if I had been in
the best of health, even if I should be eloquent beyond my best previous
effort, there was little or no chance that anything I might say would
avail to placate either magnate or to abate either's hostility toward me.
And I knew that, in my dazed condition, the chances were that I would
bungle the simplest mental task.

Yet I formed the purpose of attempting, that very morning, to see both
Satronius and Vedius, and of attempting, if I was admitted to either, to
convince him that he had no reason to be incensed with me, but that he
should rather be incensed against my assailants: an aim impossible of
attainment, as I knew, but would not admit to myself.

As I was to have no reception that morning I lay abed a while longer, at
Agathemer's earnest solicitation.

Little good it did me. In my mind, behind my shut eyelids, I rehearsed the
unfortunate occurrences on the road, I groped back to their causes.

I could see that Tanno's jesting replies to the Satronians he had met on
the road had given them the idea that Xantha was being conveyed, in a shut
litter, to Villa Vedia: similarly his quizzical words to the Vedians he
had met had given them a similar notion that Greia was being smuggled
behind slid panels and drawn curtains, to Villa Satronia.

The men of each side had spread their conjecture among their clansmen.
Each side had made the forecast that the abductors would try to carry off
their prize to Rome: each had calculated that the other side would try to
fool them, that they would not travel the obvious road, but try to escape
by boldly following the route least to be expected. So the Vedians
inferred that the Satronians, instead of taking their direct road to the
Salarian Highway, would expect an ambush along it and would try to sneak
through Vediamnum. Therefore they were in ambush at Vediamnum. Similarly
and for similar reasons the Satronians were in ambush below their road
entrance, calculating that the Vedians would pass that way.

I had blundered on both ambushes in succession.

I lay, eyes closed, raging at my lack of foresight and at my hideous bad
luck.

When Agathemer knew that I could not be kept longer abed he brought me a
cup of delicious hot mulled wine and a roll almost as well-flavored as
Ofatulena's, for my town cook was fit for a senator's kitchen. I lay still
a while longer.

When I stood up I felt dizzy and faint, but I was resolved and stubborn.
Besides, I craved fresh air and thought that an airing would revive me. In
fact, once out of doors and in my litter, with all Uncle's sliding panels
open, I felt very much better. I told my bearers to take me to the Vedian
mansion.

There the doorkeeper, indeed, stared, and the footmen nudged each other,
but I was received civilly and was shown into the atrium, which I found
crowded with the clan clients and with gentlemen like myself.

The atrium of the Vedian mansion had kept, by family tradition, a sort of
affectation of old-fashioned plainness. It was indeed lined with expensive
marbles, but it was far soberer in coloring, far simpler in every detail,
than most atriums of similar houses. Instead of striving for an effect of
opulent gorgeousness by every device of material, color and decoration,
the heads of the Vedian family had expressed, in their atrium, their cult
of primitive simplicity. Compared with others of the houses of senators
their atrium appeared bare and bleak.

His guests gazed at me curiously as I advanced to greet our host.

Vedius, the smallest man in the throng, stood blinking at me with his red
eyelids, his bald head shining from its top to the thin fringe of reddish
hair above his big flaring ears, his small wizened face all screwed up
into a knot, his thin lips pursed, his little ferret eyes, close-set
against his mean, miserly nose, peering at me under their blinking red
lids.

His expression was malign and sneering, his tone sarcastic, but his mere
words were not discourteous.

"I am delighted to see you, Andivius," he said, "and very much amazed to
see you here.

"I have been told that on the eighth day before the Ides, you entered
Vediamnum early of a rainy morning, with an escort so numerous that none
could have conjectured that the cavalcade was yours; that, when three or
four of the inhabitants of the village accosted you civilly and asked who
you were and where you were going, your men, without any reply, fell on
them and beat them unmercifully; that, when the population of Vediamnum
rushed to the assistance of their fellows, your convoy set upon them and
started a pitched battle, mishandling them so frightfully that the street
was strewn with stunned and bleeding villagers; that you not only
participated in the affray, but fomented it and led it; that the two men
who have since died, fell under blows from your own quarter-staff.

"Now, the fact that I see you here leads me to conjecture that, after the
occurrences which I have rehearsed, you would not have presented yourself
before me and come to salute me, had you not had some version of these
events other than that uniformly reported to me. If you have any version
differing from those which I have heard, speak; we listen."

I had begun to feel dizzy and faint just as soon as I was indoors, I
seemed dazed and as if my faculties were numb; at his ironical mock-
courtesy I felt myself hot and cold all over. Yet I essayed to state my
side of the case.

I explained all the circumstances, narrated Tanno's unexpected arrival,
his quizzical bantering of the persons whom he encountered on the road, my
tenants' petition, my agreement with Marcus Martins, the accretion of
Hirnio and Murmex to our party, Tanno's insistence on reaching the
Salarian Highway through Vediamnum, and all the other trivial factors
which had conspired to my undoing; I described the affray in Vediamnum,
both as I had seen it and as Tanno and Agathemer had told me of it;
similarly the fight below Villa Satronia. I thought I was lucid and
convincing.

When I paused Vedius leered at me.

"Andivius," he said, "I am not such a fool as you take me for. I am not in
any way deceived by all that rigmarole. I see through you and your words
as I saw through your actions. I comprehend perfectly that you connived
with the Satronians to entice my people into a roadside brawl to discredit
our clan. I understand how ingeniously you made all your arrangements,
even to concocting a sham fight with the Satronians to enable you to put
forward the excuses you have offered.

"Your plans miscarried at only two points: you did not mean to leave any
corpses, yet you caused the deaths of two of my retainers; you did not
mean to suffer anything yourself, yet in your sham fight you were
accidentally hit on the head.

"Blows on the head often unsettle the intellect. I take that into
consideration in dealing with you. If you go home now and recover from
your injury your mind will clear. Then you will have wit enough to decide
how soon and how often it will be advisable for you to return here!"

His labored sarcasm was entirely intelligible. I bade him farewell as
ceremoniously as I could manage.

He silkily said:

"I have a bit of parting advice for you, Andivius. The climate of Bruttium
is far better than that of Rome or Sabinum in promoting a recovery from
any sort of illness; it is also far more conducive to long life. If you
are wise Rome will not see you linger here, nor will either Sabinum or
Rome see you return; a word to the wise is enough."

Somehow I reached my litter. I understood his implied threat and saw
endless difficulties and perils confronting me.

At the Satronian mansion the lackeys were insolent and it needed all
Agathemer's tact and self-control, and all mine to browbeat them into
admitting me.

As much as possible in contrast with the Vedian atrium was the Satronian
atrium, a hall decorated as gorgeously, floridly and opulently as any in
Rome; fairly walled with statues almost jostling in their niches, so
closely were the niches set; and all behind, between and above them ablaze
with crimson and glittering with gilding; every inch of walls and ceiling
carved, colored, gilded and glowing.

Satronius was similarly in contrast with Vedius, a man tall, bulky,
swarthy, rubicund and overbearing.

No finesse about Satronius, not a trace.

From amid his bevy of sycophants and toadies, over the heads of his
fashionably garbed guests, he towered, his face red as a beacon, his big
bullet head wagging, his great mouth open.

He roared at me:

"What brings you here, with your hands red with the blood of three of my
henchmen? No Greek can outdo you in effrontery, Andivius. You are the
shame of our nobility. To force your way into my morning reception after
having killed three of my men in an unprovoked assault on them on the open
road on my own land!"

I kept my temper and somehow kept my head clear, though it buzzed, and I
kept my feet though I seemed to myself to reel. I spoke up for myself
boldly and, I thought, expounded the circumstances and my version of the
brawls even better than I had to Vedius.

To my amazement Satronius, in more brutal language, all but duplicated
what Vedius had said to me, only reversing the clan names. He was
convinced that I had assaulted his men by prearrangement with the Vedians,
after a mock fight with them at Vediamnum.

I saw I was accomplishing nothing and endeavored to escape after a formal
farewell.

Satronius roared after me:

"You left three corpses on the roadway below my villa. I'll not forget
them nor will any man of my name. If you have sense you'll keep away from
Sabinum, you'll get out of Rome, you'll hide yourself far away. My men
have long memories and keen eyes. There'll be another corpse found
somewhere by and by and the score paid off."

I laughed mirthlessly to myself as I climbed into my litter. I had, in
fact, embroiled myself hopelessly with both sides of the feud.

Then my men carried me to the Palace.

The enormousness and magnificence of the great public throne-room had
always overwhelmed me with a sense of my own insignificance. On that
morning, chagrined at my reception by Vedius and Satronius, weak, ill and
tottering on my feet, needing all my will power to stand steadily and not
reel, with my head buzzing and my ears humming, feeling large and light
and queer, I was abased and crushed by the vastness and hugeness of the
room and by the uncountable crowd which thronged it.

Necessarily I was kept standing a long time in the press, and, in my
weakened condition, I found my toga more than usually a burden, which is
saying a great deal.

I suppose the toga was a natural enough garment for our ancestors, who
practically wore nothing else, as their tunics were short and light. But
since we have adopted and even developed foreign fashions in attire, we
are sufficiently clad without any toga at all. To have to conceal one's
becoming clothes under a toga, on all state and official occasions, is
irritating to any well-dressed man even in the coldest weather, when the
weight of the toga is unnoticed, since its warmth is grateful.

But to have to stew in a toga in July, when the lightest clothing is none
too light, is a positive affliction, even out of doors on a breezy day.
Indoors, in still and muggy weather, when one is jammed in a throng for an
hour or two, a toga becomes an instrument of torture. Yet togas we must
wear at all public functions, and though we rage at the infliction and
wonder at the queerness of the fate which has, by mere force of
traditional fashion, condemned us to such unconscionable sufferings, yet
no one can devise any means of breaking with our hereditary social
conventions in attire. Therefore we continue to suffer though we rail.

If a toga is a misery to a strong, well man, conceive of the agonies I
suffered in my weakened state, when I needed rest and fresh air, and had
to stand, supporting that load of garments, the sweat soaking my inner
tunic, fainting from exhaustion and heat.

I somewhat revived when Tanno edged his way through the crowd and stood by
me. We talked of my health, he rebuking me for my rashness in coming out
so soon, I protesting that I was plenty well enough and feeling better for
my outing.

There we stood an hour or more, very uncomfortable, Tanno making
conversation to keep me cheerful.

I needed his companionship and the atmosphere he diffused. For in addition
to my illness and the circumstances I have described, I suffered from the
proximity of Talponius Pulto, my only enemy among my acquaintances in the
City. I had seen him once already that morning, in the Vedian atrium,
where he had stood beside Vedius Vedianus, towering over his diminutive
host, for he was a very tall man. Now, in the Imperial Audience Hall, he
was almost a full head taller than any man in the press about him, so that
I could not but be aware of his satirical gaze.

He was a singularly handsome man, surpassed by few among our nobility, and
I had remarked how he dwarfed Vedius, how he made him appear stunted and
contemptible. He had a head well shaped and well set, curly brown hair,
fine and abundant, a high forehead, wide-set dark blue eyes, a chiseled
nose, a perfect mouth and a fine, rounded chin. His neck was the envy of
half our most beautiful women. His carriage was noble and he always looked
a very distinguished man.

I could never divine why he hated me, but hate me he had from our earliest
encounters. He derided me, maligned me and had often thwarted me from,
apparently, mere spitefulness.

As I knew his evil gaze on me I now, in my weakened condition, somehow
felt unable to bear it.

Yet I was somewhat buoyed up, as I stood there, by a recurrence of
thoughts which I had often had before under similar circumstances. Most
men of my rank seemed to take their wealth and position as matters of
course. I never could. I have, all my life, at times meditated on my good
fortune in being a Roman and a Roman of equestrian rank. While waiting in
the great Audience Hall of the Palace, especially, the emotions aroused by
these meditations often became so poignant as almost to overcome me, on
this day in particular. As I viewed the splendor of the Hall and the
gorgeousness of the crowd that thronged it, my heart swelled at the
thought of being part of all that magnificence. It thrilled me to feel
that I had a share and had a right to a share in Rome's glory.

The Emperor was busy with a succession of embassies, delegations and so
on, and, as far as I could see, was in a good humor and trying to appear
affable and not to seem bored.

After the deputations were disposed of the senators passed before the
throne and saluted the Prince. Commodus barely spoke to most of them; it
seemed to me, indeed, that he said more to Vedius and Satronius than to
any other senators.

Then came the turn of us knights, far more numerous than the senators. The
ushers positively hurried us along.

To me, to my amazement, the Emperor spoke very kindly.

"I am delighted to see you here today, Hedulio." he said.

"And I am sorry that I have no time for what I want to ask you and say to
you.

"I have heard of your illness and I know how it originated. Galen told me
you ought to keep your bed for days yet. Are you sure you are well enough
to be out?"

"I think it is doing me good, your Majesty," I replied. "Your words are, I
know."

"If you feel too ill to come here tomorrow," he said, "I'll hold you
excused, but in that case send a message early. I want you here tomorrow,
specially, come if you can.

"Meanwhile, tell me, has coming here to-day tired you? Can you stay
longer?"

"I certainly can," I replied, elated at his notice.

"Then stay here till this tiresome ceremonial is over," he said, "and
accompany me to the Palace Stadium. I have some yokes of chariot horses to
look over and try out, and some new chariots to try. I want you there. I
may need your advice."

Flattered, I felt strength course through my veins and fatigue vanish. I
passed completely round the lower part of the room and, with Tanno, took
my stand near the southeastern door, by which he would pass out if on his
way to the Stadium.

Few senators passed through that door with the party of which I was one,
the invitations being based on horsemanship and good fellowship, not on
wealth, social prominence or political importance.

In the Stadium, of course, it was not only possible but natural to sit
down and Tanno and I took our seats in the shade and as far back as our
rank permitted.

I was amazed to find how much I needed to sit down, what a relief it was,
and to realize how near I had been to fainting. In the breezy shade I soon
revived and felt my strength come back.

From my comfortable seat I watched one of those exhibitions of miraculous
horsemanship of which only Commodus was capable.

The Palace Stadium, of course, is a very large and impressive structure
and its arena of no mean extent. But compared, not merely with the Circus
Maximus, but with the Flaminian Circus or Domitian's Stadium it seemed
small and contracted.

In this comparatively cramped space Commodus, divested of his official
robes and clad only in a charioteer's tunic, belt and boots, performed
some amazing feats of horsemastery.

The pace to which he could speed up a four-horse team on that short
straight-away, his ability to postpone slowing them down for the turn, and
yet to pull them in handily and in time, the deftness and precision of his
short turns, the promptness with which he compelled them to gather speed
after the turn, these were astonishing, enough; but far more astonishing
were his grace of pose, his perfect form in every motion, the ease of all
his manoeuvres, the sense of his effortless control of his vehicle, of
reserve strength greatly in excess of the strength he exerted; these were
nothing short of dazzling. His pride in his artistry, for it amounted to
that, and his enjoyment of every detail of what he did and of the sport in
general, was infectious and delightful. I felt my love of horses growing
in me with my admiration for so perfect a horseman, felt the like in all
the spectators.

Team after team and chariot after chariot he tried out.

Meanwhile Tanno and I, seated comfortably side by side, varied our
watching of Commodus and our praises of his driving with talk of my
embroilment with both sides of the feud, with rehearsing to each other the
unseen missteps which had led me into such a hideous predicament, and with
discussions of what might be done to set me right with both clans. Also he
described again to me what had occurred on the road after I was knocked
senseless and rehearsed his version of both fights, I commenting and
telling him what I recalled.

"What occupies my thoughts most," he said, "is that statuesque horseback
informer planted by the roadside in the rain. What in the name of Mercury
was he doing in your Sabine fog so early on a wet day?"

I was unable to make any conjecture.

For some time Commodus was almost uninterruptedly on the arena, making his
changes from team to team, with scarcely an instant's interval. When he
lingered under the arcade at the starting end of the Stadium Tanno
remarked:

"We had best join the gathering. Do you feel sufficiently rested?"

I stood up and, for the first time that day, did so without any dizziness,
lightheadedness or weakness in my knees. I felt almost myself.

Under the arcade we found Commodus explaining the merits of a new chariot
made after his own design. It was a beautiful specimen of the vehicle-
maker's art, its pole tipped with a bronze lion's head exquisitely chased,
the pole itself of ash, the axle and wheel-spokes of cornel-wood, all the
woodwork gilded, the hubs and tires of wrought bronze, also gilded, the
front of the chariot-body of hammered bronze, embossed with figures
depicting two of the Labors of Hercules; every part profusely decorated
and the whole effect very tasteful.

Commodus ignored all these beauties entirely and discoursed of its
measurements.

"Come close, Hedulio," he commanded, "this is just what I wanted you for."

The jockeys, athletes, acrobats and mimes about him made way for Tanno and
me and some other gentlemen.

"I have always had very definite theories of chariot construction,"
Commodus went on. "I hold that the popular makes are all bad; in fact I am
positively of the opinion that the tendencies in chariot building have
been all in the wrong direction for centuries. They have followed and
intensified the traditions from ancient days, when chariots were chiefly
used for battle and only once in a while for racing.

"For battle purposes chariots, of course, were built for speed and quick
turning, but after that, to avoid upsets. When a man was going to drive a
pair of half-wild stallions across trackless country, over gullies and
boulders, through bushes, up and down hill, often along a gravelly
hillside, he saw to it that his chariot would keep right side up no matter
how it bounced and tilted and swerved. He made sure that his axle was
long, his wheels far apart, and their spokes short, so that his chariot-
bed was as low as possible. He was right.

"But, after fighting from chariots was wholly a thing of the past in Italy
and chariots were used, as they are used, for racing only, why cling to
provisions for obsolete uses?

"A good general thinks of winning victories, not, like the fools I have
disgracing me along the Rhine, of avoiding defeats. So a good charioteer
ought to think, not of avoiding upsets, but of winning races. Yet all
charioteers appear to want their vehicles as low built as possible, with
short spoked wheels, wide apart on the ends of a long axle. That makes
them feel safer on a short turn, and, so help me Hercules, I hardly blame
them, anyhow. Besides, they all want to spraddle their legs apart and set
their feet wide, so as to stand firm on the chariot bed, so they want the
chariot body made as wide as possible.

"Now I don't need to plant my feet far apart when I drive. I believe I
could drive on one foot and keep my balance. So I hold a broad chariot
body is worse than unnecessary. More than that I maintain that the lower
the axle is set, the less the team's strength goes into attaining speed.
The lower the axle is set, the more sharply the pole slopes upward from
the axle to the yoke-ring; the less of the team's energy goes into pulling
the chariot along, the more of it is wasted, so to speak, on lifting the
chariot into the air at every leap forward. The higher the axle is set,
the nearer the pole is to being level, the less power is wasted on that
upward pull and the more is utilized on the forward pull and goes to
produce speed.

"Then again, I maintain that the farther apart the wheels are set the more
one drags against the other, not only at the turns, where anyone can see
the outer wheel drag on the inner, but at every swerve of the team on the
straightaway. All such dragging reduces speed and tires the team with
pulling which is energy utterly wasted.

"I hold the ideal racing chariot should have a chariot body as narrow as
possible, not much wider than the width of the driver's hips; should have
the wheels as close together as possible, to diminish the drag of one
wheel against the other, should have the axle set as high as can be
managed.

"All charioteers exclaim that such a chariot tends to overset. So it does.
But I never have had an overset and I never expect to overset. I know how
to drive and poise myself so as to keep my chariot right side up, and I
never think of oversetting, I think of winning my race, and always do.

"Anyhow, here before your eyes, is my new racing chariot and of all the
chariots ever made on earth this has the longest wheel-spokes, the
highest-set axle, the closest-set wheels and the narrowest chariot body.
Now I'm going to try it out and show it off."

He did to admiration, amid excited acclaims, his four cream-colored mares
fairly flying along the straights and taking the turns at a pace which
made us hold our breath.

After this thrilling exhibition he came back under the arcade and spoke to
me first.

"Hedulio," he said, "you are one of the most competent horsemasters I ever
knew. What do you think of my idea of the best form for a racing chariot?"

"I think," I said, "that it has all the merits you claim for it, but that
not one charioteer in ten thousand could drive in it and avoid an upset,
sooner or later, at a turn."

"Right you are!" he replied, "but I am one charioteer in ten thousand."

"Say in a hundred thousand," I ventured to add. "For surely you could not
find, among all the professionals in the Empire, any other man to equal
you in team-driving."

He beamed at me.

When we left the Palace Tanno saw me in my litter and insisted on
following behind mine in his until he had seen me out of mine and into my
own house.

There I had a very brief and very light lunch, Agathemer hovering over me
and reminding me of Galen's orders for my diet, so that I found myself
forbidden every viand which I craved and asked for, and limited to the
very simple fare which had been prepared for me.

After lunch I went to bed and to sleep.

I woke soon and very wide awake. When I rolled into bed I had felt so
utterly done up with the excitement of my interviews with Vedius and
Satronius, with the exertion of standing in the Throne-room and through
the Emperor's lecture on chariot design, that I had renounced my intention
of calling on Vedia and had resigned myself to postponing my attempt to
see her until the morrow.

I woke all feverish energy and restless determination to go to see her at
once. Therefore, between the siesta hour and the hour of the bath, I
presented myself at Vedia's mansion.

I was at once ushered into her atrium, where I found myself alone and
where I sat waiting some time.

When a maid summoned me into her _tablinum_, I found her alone, seated in
her favorite lounging chair, charmingly attired and, I thought, more
lovely than I had ever seen her.

"Oh, Caia!" I cried.

She bridled and stared at me haughtily.

"'Vedia,'" if you please, she said coldly. "You have no manner of right to
'Caia' me, Andivius."

The distant formality of her address, her disdainful tone, the affront of
her words, chilled me like a dash of cold water.

"Caia!" I stammered, "Vedia, I mean. What has happened? What is wrong?"
For I could not credit that she would be incensed with me because of my
involvement in the affray in Vediamnum nor that she would condemn me
unheard, especially as Tanno had told me, in the Stadium of the Palace,
that he had taken care to call on Vedia, and give her his version of my
mishap.

She glowered at me.

"Your effrontery," she burst out, "amazes me. I am incredulous that I
really see you in my home, that you really have the shamelessness to force
yourself into my presence! It is an unforgivable affront that you should
pretend love for me and aspire to be my husband and all the while be
philandering after a freedwoman; but that you should parade yourself on
the high road with her all the way from your villa to Rome, with the hussy
enthroned in your own travelling carriage, is far worse. That you should
get involved in roadside brawls with competitors for the possession of the
minx is worse yet. Worst of all that you should advertise by all these
doings, to all our world, your infatuation for such a creature and your
greater interest in her than in me. I am indignant that I have considered
marrying a suitor capable of such vileness, of such fatuity, of such
folly."

I was like a sailboat taken all aback by a sudden change of wind. I could
not believe my ears.

"I never took the slightest interest in Marcia," I protested, "except to
keep my uncle from marrying her, after he set her free. She made eyes at
me also, of course, for she made eyes at every marriageable man within
reach. But I never had anything to do with her, never called on her by
myself, never so much as talked to her alone. I went to her dinners, of
course. All widowers and bachelors of our district went to her dinners.
But her dinners were the pattern of propriety in every way. Your own
grandmother's famous dinners were not more decorous. Except for being a
guest, with others, at her dinners, I never was at her villa. I lent my
carriage not to her but to her bridegroom, Marcus Martius, a prosperous
gentleman of my neighborhood, of whom you have often heard me speak, a
friend of my uncle's and a friend of mine since boyhood. The fights, as
Tanno explained to you, had nothing to do with Marcia and her involvement
in them was as accidental as mine."

Vedia did not look a particle mollified.

"You men," she said, "are all alike. You will philander about your nasty
jades. But, at least, when you vow that you love one woman and one only,
and use every artifice to induce her to marry you, you should feel it
incumbent on you to keep away from such creatures as this Marcia of yours.
But you must needs dangle about her and go to her dinners. That was bad
enough. But, while wooing me, to arrange a mock marriage for her with a
local confederate and then positively bring her to Rome with you was
infinitely worse. I am insulted, of course. But, above and beyond your
treachery to me, I am insulted at your bungling your clumsy intrigues and
flaunting the minx in the face of all the world and setting all
fashionable Rome to gossiping about you and your hussy and to wondering
how I am going to act about it.

"I'll show them and you how I am going to act! I'm angry at your double-
dealing; at your lies I am furious. I hate you. I hope I'll never set eyes
on you again. The sooner you are gone, the better I'll like it. And I'll
give orders to ensure your never darkening my doors again!"

I tried to argue with her, to persuade her, to convince her, to induce her
to listen to me.

She raged at me.

Dazed, I groped my way to my litter and, once in it, lost consciousness
entirely, not in a faint, but in the sleep of total exhaustion.

As I rolled into my litter, feeling utterly unfit to enjoy a bath with any
natural associates, I had ordered my bearers to take me home.

There I rested a while, for I waked before I reached home. Then I bathed,
ate a simple dinner, alone with Agathemer, and went at once to bed.




CHAPTER VII

A RATHER GOOD DAY


I slept soundly all night but woke at the first appearance of light. I lay
abed, my mind milling over my situation, over Vedia's unexpected jealousy
of Marcia, over the absurdity of it, over her illogical but impregnable
indignation and over the equally baseless but similarly unalterable
hostility of Vedius and Satronius.

I concluded to try again to placate all three. It seemed to me I could
recall many omissions and infelicities in what I had said to both
magnates, while in dealing with Vedia I seemed to myself to have been
tongue-tied and fragmentary.

After the bit of bread and hot mulled wine which I did not crave, but
which Agathemer insisted on my taking according to Galen's orders, I held
a brief morning reception. My nine farmer-tenants were all present, all
pathetically and touchingly glad to see me again about, even old Chryseros
Philargyrus.

They had a petition to prefer, namely, that I should give them permission
to leave Rome and return home, jointly and severally, just as soon as they
pleased. Ligo Atrior acted as spokesman and said that they had come
provided for a month's stay, as I had ordered, but they felt that they
could see all the sights of Rome which would interest them before the
month was out, and some sooner than others. Moreover they felt that
although they had left their farms in the best of condition and in
faithful hands, yet their desire to return home would soon overcome their
interest in sight-seeing and would grow more overmastering daily.

I readily accorded what they asked.

Murmex Lucro was there, and his appearance of superhuman strength
impressed me even more than on the road, I bade him meet me at the Palace,
and instructed him by which entrance to approach it and at what portal and
precisely where to take his stand in order that I might not miss him.
Agathemer suggested that I detail one of my slaves to act as his guide and
I did so.

My salutants disposed of without hurry and to the last man, in spite of
Agathemer's protests, I ordered my litter.

At the Vedian mansion I was refused admission. Agathemer and even I argued
and expostulated, but the doorkeeper said he had explicit orders not to
admit me, and the four big Nubians flanking the vestibule, two on a side,
looked capable of using muscular force on any would-be intruder and
appeared eager for a pretext for hurling themselves on me.

I climbed back into my litter.

As my men shouldered it, the doorkeeper or some one of his helpers made
the mistake of unchaining the watch-dog at me.

He was a big, short-haired, black and white Aquitanian dog. He flew at the
calves of my bearers, snarling, and would have bitten them badly had I not
half rolled, half fallen from my litter, almost into his jaws; in fact,
not a foot in front of him.

As all such animals always do with me, he checked, cowered, fawned and
then exhibited every symptom of recognition, delight and affection. I
patted him, pulled his ears, smoothed his spine and climbed back into my
litter. The dog took his place under it as naturally as if I had raised
him from a puppy and kept neatly underneath it, all the way to the
Satronian Mansion.

There, at sight of me, as I descended from my litter, the doorkeeper
loosed his big fawn-colored Molossian hound at me. And he came in silence,
but his lips wrinkled off his teeth, swift as a lion and looking in fact
as big as a yearling lioness and not unlike one in outline and color.

The Aquitanian from under the litter flew at him with a snarl, the
Molossian replied with a louder snarl, the two dogs clinched and tore each
other, snarling, and hung to each other, worrying and growling and
snarling, to the delight of my bearers.

Out of the Satronian mansion poured a small mob of footmen, lackeys and
such house-slaves. But not one dared approach the two dogs. At a safe
distance they watched the fight.

I seized the dogs, spoke to them, quieted them, separated them and when I
ordered them, they lay down side by side under the litter.

I climbed in.

As my bearers shouldered the litter, the Satronian doorkeeper came forward
and said truculently:

"That is our dog under your litter."

"Is he your dog?" I retorted. "Prove it! Take hold of him."

The doorkeeper tried and the Molossian snarled at him. He called the
footmen to help him.

At that somehow, I both lost my temper and felt prankish.

"Chase 'em, Terror," I called. "Chase 'em, Fury!"

It was a wonder to see the Aquitanian obey, to see the Molossian obey was
a portent.

Into the mansion scuttled the doorkeeper, the footmen, the lackeys, the
hangers-on, the two dogs barking at their heels.

I called them off in time to forestall any lacerated ankles, and still
more marvellously they obeyed instantly, checked, withdrew to under the
litter and there paced, side by side, to Vedia's home.

There, also, I was denied admission, but urbanely, the porter asserting
that his mistress was not at home.

While I was questioning the porter, who was becomingly respectful, a bevy
of Vedian retainers, house-lackeys and other slaves, overtook me,
demanding the return of the Aquitanian watchdog.

"Take him!" I said, "take him if you can!"

The boldest of them approached the dog, calling him by name and
wheedlingly. When he was but a yard or so away the dog flew at his throat
and almost set his fangs into it, for they snapped together a mere hand's
breadth short.

The fellow recoiled and, when the dog followed like an arrow from a bow,
took to his heels, his companions with him, and they ran helter-skelter
down the street, the dog pursuing them to the corner of the Carinae, and
returning, his tongue hanging out, his tail wagging, with all the
demonstrations of a dog who feels he has done his full duty and has earned
approbation.

Hardly had he returned when a band of Satronians appeared and a similar
scene was enacted, with the Molossian as chief actor.

When the last Satronian had vanished round the corner of the thoroughfare
I reëntered my litter and we set off for the Palace, both dogs sedately
pacing side by side underneath.

At the Palace portal Agathemer had no difficulty in locating Murmex, even
in the crowd which packed all approaches to that entrance. I spoke to the
centurion on duty at the portal and to the head out-door usher, meaning to
arrange that Murmex should be let in among the first when the commonality
were admitted after the senators and knights had paid their duty to the
Emperor. To my amazement the head usher looked at a list or memorandum
which he had in his hand and said:

"You are Andivius Hedulio, are you not? You are to take in with you
anybody you please, to the number of ten. Caesar has given special orders
about you." Murmex therefore passed in with me and took up a position in
the lower part of the Audience Hall, where I could send a page to summon
him if my plans worked out as I hoped.

We were early and the vast public throne-room almost empty. Tanno joined
me after I had stood but a short time and not long afterwards the Emperor
entered, just as a fair crowd of senators had assembled.

The formal salutation began at once and I noticed that the Emperor said
something personal to Vedius and that Vedius stepped out of the line of
salutants and took up a position behind the Emperor on his left. Similarly
he spoke to Satronius, who similarly took his station behind the Emperor
on his right.

When, in the long line of my equals, in an Audience Hall now jammed to the
doors, I drew near to the throne, I felt a growing embarrassment at seeing
the Emperor flanked by my two enemies. But, when I made my salutation, to
my amazement, the Emperor took my hand and leaned over and kissed me as if
I had been a senator.

"I love you, Hedulio," he said, "and I am proud of you. I have heard very
laudatory reports of you. My agents all agree in reporting that you have,
in very difficult circumstances, done your utmost to avoid giving offence
to any of your neighbors in Sabinum, and that, if you have given offense,
it was not your fault. They also agree in reporting that, mild and
peaceful as you are by disposition, you know how to defend yourself when
attacked, that you are not only a bold and resolute man in a tight place,
but resourceful and prompt, a hard and quick hitter, and what is more, a
past master at quarter-staff play. I love brave men and good fighters. I
commend you."

He turned ironically to Vedius and asked:

"Did you miss any part of what I have just said to Andivius? I meant you
to hear every word of it."

Vedius, his mean face lead-gray, bowed and said:

"Your Majesty was completely audible."

Then Commodus similarly questioned Satronius. He, his big face brick-red,
his eyes popping out, seemed half strangled by his efforts to speak.

"I could hear it all," he managed to say.

"You two stand facing me," Commodus commanded. "Stand on either side of
Andivius."

They so placed themselves with a very bad grace.

The Emperor raised his voice.

"Come near, all you senators," he commanded. "I want all of you to hear
what I am about to say and to be witnesses to it."

Everybody, senators, knights and commoners crowded as close to the throne
as etiquette and the ushers would allow.

"Now listen to me," spoke Commodus. "You know I hate all sorts of official
business and should greatly prefer to put my entire time and energies on
athletics, horsemanship and swordsmanship, archery and other things really
worth while. I make no secret of my love for the activities at which I am
best and of my detestation of my duties.

"But, just because I hate my duties, it does not follow that I neglect
them. A lot of you think I do. I'll show you you are not always right, nor
often right. Just because I surround myself with wrestlers and charioteers
and gladiators and other good fellows, not with senile self-styled
philosophers, prosy and with unkempt beards and rough cloaks, as my father
did, half of you think I am incapable of being serious, or haven't
intellect enough to understand government or sense enough to care for the
Empire.

"You are mightily mistaken. I realize the importance of my
responsibilities and the magnificence of my opportunities. I hate routine,
but I know well the value of our Empire and that I, as Prince of the
Republic, [Footnote: See Note A.] have a bigger stake in it than any other
citizen of our Republic. I am not wholly absorbed in the joys of
practicing feats of strength and skill. I put more time on governing than
you think.

"I am autocrat of our world, and I know how to make my influence felt when
I choose. I have very positive views about fighting. Fighting has to go
on, on the frontiers of the Empire. My army can keep off our foes, but it
cannot kill off the Moorish and Arab and Scythian nomads, nor the hordes
of the German forests and the Caledonian moors. The Marcomanni and the
rest will claw at us. There must be fighting on the frontiers. It is
proper that there should be fighting where necessary, on any frontier, and
corpses scattered about.

"Also corpses are in place on any arena of any amphitheatre anywhere
inside our frontiers; fighting inside amphitheatres is proper and seemly.

"But I will tolerate no fighting inside our frontiers outside the
amphitheatres. I'll not condone any corpses on the pavement of any street
or on the road of any highway or byways. I'll not permit any battles, set-
tos, affrays or brawls in towns or villages or on roads. You hear me? You
hear me, Vedius? You hear me, Satronius? You hear me, all of you?

"Now it so happened that I had heard of your disgraceful Sabine feud,
which mars the peace of a whole countryside near Reate, and I had sent a
competent and reliable agent with four assistants to investigate and
report. For once luck was with me: generally my luck as a ruler is as bad
as it is good for me as an athlete. It so happened that my agents had just
completed their preliminary investigations and acquainted themselves with
general conditions when your idiotic feud broke loose in two abductions of
women, one by each side, that put my agents on their mettle. They kept
awake. They are no fools. My head man has a keen scent for incipient
trouble; he managed to have one of his helpers get among the ambushers in
Vediamnum and another among those on your byway, Satronius. Each of these
two severally heard all the talk of the ambushers with whom he mingled; so
I have had a faithful report of just what the Vedian ambush meant to do to
the Satronian convoy they lay in wait for and similarly of the other side.
Each was waiting for a sheep; both caught a wildcat. If the men in the
ambushes had had any eyes or any sense, no fight would have occurred. As
it was they got no more than they deserved. Hedulio was set on without
provocation and merely defended himself and his associates as any self-
respecting free man would. I have no fault to find with Hedulio. I take
you all to witness.

"Now that disposes of what is past. As to the future I shall tolerate no
illegalities of any kind anywhere in the City, in Italy or in the Empire.
You'll see. Dr. Commodus will cure this epidemic of lawlessness which
afflicts the Republic. You'll see my agents run down, catch and bring to
punishment the ingenious rascals who have been amusing themselves by
masquerading as Imperial Messengers, scampering across the landscape for
the fun of the thing, eating lavish meals at my cost, running the legs off
my best horses, lodging luxuriously in the best bed at every inn they stop
at, showing forged papers, or showing none at all, using no other means
than effrontery and assurance. I'll have them stopped. I'll stop them. And
I'll quell, I'll squelch this outburst of banditry of which we have too
much. I'll see that my agents hunt down and capture and execute these
highwaymen who rob not only rich travellers, but government treasure-
convoys, who even rob Imperial Messengers. A pretty state of affairs when
my couriers are fair game alike for impostors and robbers. I'll make the
slyest and the boldest quail at the idea of interfering with one of my
despatch riders and I'll exterminate all highwaymen. I'll have no one
swaggering up and down Italy, now in Liguria, now in Apulia, mocking the
law and its guardians, looting as he pleases, uncatchable, untraceable,
hidden and helped by mountaineers and farm-laborers and farmers, even
welcomed secretly in villages and towns, acclaimed as King of the
Highwaymen, until songs are made on him and sung even in Rome. He'll soon
decorate a gibbet, impaled there and spiked there too. You'll see. And
still less will I tolerate lawlessness among men of property and position.
The past actions of you magnates I dislike. As to the future I may say
that my agents were at your morning reception yesterday, Vedius, and heard
and reported your covert threats to Hedulio: likewise two were at your
house, Satronius, and heard and reported your open threats.

"Now I perfectly understand what you two implied. You threatened Andivius
with assassination, if he returned to his estates in Sabinum or if he so
much as remained in Rome.

"Beware! Be warned! Take care! I am easy-going enough, but I am Caesar and
I'll brook no trenching on my personal prerogatives or my legal authority.
I have the tribunician power for life, I am commissioned thereby to forbid
anything in the Republic and to see to it that no magistrate or citizen
oversteps the limits of what is permitted him. By your threats to Hedulio
you practically arrogate to yourself the right to exile a Roman of
equestrian rank. Banishment is a governmental power and a prerogative of
Caesar. I'll have no magnates of such overweening behavior. I am jealous
of my prerogatives, more than jealous!

"I know what you intend and what you can accomplish by your henchmen. I
comprehend that hundreds of stilettos are being sharpened, up there in the
Sabine Hills, and down here in the slums, for a chance at Hedulio.

"Now I can do much by legal authority and more by personal prerogative. Be
quick. Pass the word swiftly to all your satellites, here and in Sabinum.
Let them all know that if Andivius Hedulio dies by poison or violence or
is injured by any weapon, you two at Rome and your brother at Villa Vedia
and your son, Satro, at Villa Satronia, will not see two more sunrises. I
know how to enforce my will, and well you know that. Your lives are in
pawn for his, let all your clansmen know in good time.

"And more: if you dare, either of you, to move against Hedulio in any
court at Reate or elsewhere in Sabinum for his participation in the brawls
which you fomented and he fell into, I shall see to it that not your
influence dominates any trial, but evenhanded justice, jealously watched
over by my best legal advisers. You know what that means to you."

The Emperor spoke with a sustained, white-hot fury and it was comical to
watch Satronius and Vedius, as I did by sidelong glances when the
Emperor's eyes were not on my face.

When he stopped, both magnates bowed low and each in turn expressed his
loyal submissiveness.

The Emperor dismissed them with a wave of his hand. To me he said:

"That will keep you alive, Hedulio and, I trust, help you to get back into
good health. Horrible bore, these small-size local matters; worse, if
anything, even, than the maintenance of the Rhine frontier. I loathe all
this routine. But my agents serve me pretty well. Besides putting me in
touch, with all this feud idiocy they have incidentally informed me that
you brought to Rome with you a son of Murmex Frugi, also a nephew of
Pacideianus, and a pupil of both, who has come to Rome to try his luck at
their former profession. Did you bring him here today? I hoped you would."

"I did," I answered, "and thanks to your orders, I was able to pass him in
with me. He is in this hall now."  "Fine!" cried the Emperor, "and how
about your nine tenants, who stood by you so well in both fights. Did you
bring them too?"

"I should never have so presumed," I stammered, amazed, "It would never
have entered my head to ask entry here for such simple rustics. I should
have anticipated your wrath had I so far forgot myself."

"Rustics," said Commodus, smiling, even grinning, "who can fight as I am
told your tenants can fight are always to my mind. Bring them here
tomorrow, if you like. I'll see them in the Palaestra. I'm going there
today after this function is finished. Bring your swordsman there. You
know the door. I have given orders to admit you in my retinue."

In the Palaestra Tanno cheerfully presented Murmex to some of his favorite
prize-fighters and he stood talking with them, they appraisingly conning
the son of Murmex Frugi.

Tanno and I seated ourselves well back on the middle tier of the
spectators' benches and chatted until the Emperor should have returned
from his dressing-room and should seem at leisure to notice us.

"You must not be too puffed up at your good luck of today," Tanno warned
me.

"In fact, I advise you to be very wary and to comport yourself most
modestly. You know Commodus. It has too often happened that when he has
overwhelmed a courtier with favors, his very condescension seems to cause
a reaction in his feelings and he becomes insanely suspicious. Respond
promptly to all his suggestions, of course, but do not obtrude yourself on
his notice. In particular ask no favor of him for a long time to come."

I thanked him for his advice and assured him that I most heartily agreed
with his ideas.

Presently a page summoned me, and Tanno came, too.

Commodus had rid himself of his official robes and was now clad only in an
athlete's tunic and soft-soled shoes. I presented Murmex and the Emperor
questioned him, as to his age, his upbringing, his father's years in
retirement at Nersae, as to Pacideianus and put questions about thrusts
and parries designed to test his knowledge of fence.

Then he seated himself on his throne on the little dais by the fencing-
floor and had Murmex called to him, made him stand by him, and asked his
opinion of several pairs of fighters whom he had fence, one pair after the
other.

Appearing pleased with the replies he elicited he bade Murmex go with one
of the pages, rub down and change into fencing rig. While Murmex was gone
he viewed more fencing by young aspirants matched against accredited
Palace-school trainers.

When Murmex returned he had him matched with the best of these tiros. But,
almost at once, he called to the _lanista_:

"Save that novice! Murmex will kill him, even with that lath sword, if you
don't separate them."

He then had Murmex pitted against a succession of experts, each better
than his predecessor. Murmex acquitted himself so brilliantly that
Commodus cried:

"I must try this man myself."

He stood up and stepped down from the dais. Then he spent some time in
selecting a pair of cornel-wood fencing-swords of equal length and weight
and of similar balance, repeatedly hefting the sword he had chosen and
repeatedly asking Murmex whether he was satisfied with his sword, whether
it suited him; and similarly of the choice of shields.

When they faced each other they made as pretty a spectacle as I had ever
seen: Murmex stocky, so burly that he did not look tall, square-
shouldered, deep-chested, vast of chest-girth, huge in every dimension and
yet neither heavy nor slow in his movements; Commodus tall, slender,
sinewy, lithe and graceful, quick in every movement and amazingly
handsome.

They had made but a few passes when Commodus exclaimed:

"You show your training: it is some fun to fence with you."

After not many more thrusts and parries he called out:

"Be on your guard! I'm going to attack in earnest."

There followed a hot burst of sword-play and when both adversaries were
out of breath and stepped back and stood panting, Commodus praised Murmex
highly.

"You have the best guard I have ever encountered," he said, "steady-eyed,
cautious, wary yet quick too, and always with the threat of attack in your
defense. You are a credit to your training."

When they stepped forward again Commodus commanded:

"Attack now, attack your fiercest and show your quality. I shall not be
angry if you land on me, I shall be pleased. Do your utmost!"

After the second bout he said:

"You are most dangerous in attack. At last I have found a man really worth
fencing with. You gave me all I could do to protect myself. You are a
pearl!"

He looked round at the envious faces of more than two score seasoned
professionals and addressed the gathering at large.

"We have here a man who is nephew of Pacideianus and son to Murmex Frugi,
trained since infancy by both. No wonder he is a marvel. I have never
faced a swordsman who gave me so much trouble to protect myself or who
held off my attacks so easily and completely. He is the only man alive, so
far as I know, really in my class as a fencer."

As he was eyeing the assembly to note their manner of receiving this
proclamation his expression changed.

"Egnatius!" he called sharply. "Come here!"

Egnatius Capito came forward. Like Tanno and myself he was conspicuous
since he was in his toga, most of those present being athletes and clad
for practice.

"I did not notice you among your fellow senators at my levee," said the
Emperor.

"I was not there," Egnatius admitted. "I had a press of clients at my own
levee this morning and reached the Palace just in time to hear what you
had to say to Vedius and Satronius. I tried to catch your eye as you
passed out, but you did not notice me at all."

"I had rather see you here than in the throne-room," Commodus said. "I am
told that you have let your tongue run entirely too wild in talking of me
lately. If I had not been also told that you had had too much wine I
should animadvert on your effrontery officially. As it is I prefer to
prove you wrong before these experts and gentlemen."

"Of what have I been accused?" Capito queried, steadily.

"There has been no accusation," Commodus disclaimed. "But I have been told
that, at more than one dinner, you have been fool enough to say that I am
only a sham swordsman, that I take a steel sword and face an adversary
whose sword has a blade of lead: that it is no wonder that no one scores
off me, and that I run up big scores in all my bouts."

"If I ever said anything like that," spoke Capito boldly, "I was so drunk
that I have no recollection of having said it. And I am a sober man and a
light drinker. Also I have never harbored such thoughts unless too drunk
to know what I thought or said."

"You are cold sober now, aren't you?" Commodus queried.

"Entirely sober," Egnatius agreed.

"And you are a fencer far above the average?" he pursued.

"I have been told I have no mean skill," said Capito modestly.

"Such being the case," said Commodus, "you and I shall fence. Go with the
attendants and change into fencing kit. You'll find all styles and sizes
of everything needed in the dressing-rooms. First pick out a pair of
cornel-wood swords, entirely to your mind."

When Capito had selected a pair of swords which suited both him and the
Emperor, he went off to change. While he was gone Commodus had the armorer
drill a tiny hole near the point of one sword and insert in it one of
those thorn-like little steel points which are commonly used on the ends
of donkey-goads.

When Capito returned he showed him the two swords. Capito looked up at him
questioningly and amazedly.

"The idea is this," Commodus explained. "I mean to demonstrate my perfect
ability to defend myself, as well as my dangerousness in attack. You are
to use the sword with the goad point set in it; so that, if you succeed in
hitting me, you will tear a long slash in my hide; for I am going to fence
with you in my skin only, stark; mother-naked as I was born. I shall use
the unaltered sword and you will have on your fencing-tunic, so that if I
hit you, it won't hurt you nearly as much as a hit from you will hurt me.

"If you draw blood from me, I'll pay you one hundred thousand sesterces:
if I fail to lay you out on the pavement, totally insensible, in three
bouts, I'll pay you two hundred thousand sesterces. You can pick any
_lanista_ here to judge the fight and tell us when to separate and rest."

Capito, cool enough, indicated Murmex as referee.

"He's not a _lanista_," Commodus objected.

"He's Frugi's pupil," Capito maintained, "and therefore the best _lanista_
here."

"I agree," said Commodus, and he called:

"Who's the physician on duty?"

When the official came forward he said truculently:

"Get your plasters ready and your revivers. You'll have to attend a man
flat on the pavement, insensible and with a bad scalp wound, before much
time has passed."

And actually, though Capito fenced well, he was no match for Commodus.

The bout was worth watching. The adversaries were just the same height and
differed little in weight. Capito seemed more compact and steady; Commodus
more lithe and agile. Capito was a handsome man and made a fine figure in
his scanty, leek-green fencing tunic. Commodus, always vain, of his good
looks, delighted in exhibiting himself totally nude, not only because he
loved to shock elderly noblemen imbued with old-fashioned ideas of
propriety, but also because he rightly thought himself one of the best
formed men alive. He was fond of being told that he was like Hercules but,
except in the paintings of Zeuxis, Hercules has always been depicted as
brawnier and more mature than Commodus was then or ever became, to his
last hour. To me he suggested Mercury, especially as he appears in the
paintings of Polygnotus, or Apollo, as Apelles depicted him.

Besides the grace and good looks of the two, they fenced very well, Capito
correctly and with good judgment, Commodus with amazing dash and
originality.

Capito, though bold, was wholly unable to touch Commodus, while Commodus
slashed him, even through his tunic, till his blood ran from a dozen
scratches. Before the second bout was well joined Capito was felled by a
blow on the head, which laid him flat and insensible, bleeding from a
terrible scalp wound.

After Capito had been carried off by the attendants, the Emperor, wrapped
in an athlete's blanket, talked a while to Murmex and then went off to
bathe, for he bathed many times a day.

Set free, I went out and was helped into my litter. The two dogs were
still by it, took their places under it as if they had belonged to me
since puppyhood and under it trotted as I returned home. Once home I ate
the lunch permitted me and had an hour's sound, dreamless sleep.

I woke feeling so well that I sent for Agathemer, bade him have my litter
ready and told him I was going to the Baths of Titus.

Inevitably Agathemer protested that I was not well enough; naturally I
insisted and, of course, I had my way.

As with court levees, I have never been able to take as a matter of course
without wonder and admiration, the marvellous spectacle afforded by an
assemblage of our nobility and gentry gathered for their afternoon bath in
any of our splendid Thermae. Of these I hold the Baths of Titus not only
the most magnificent, which is conceded by everybody, but also I hold them
the most impressive mass of buildings in Rome, both outside and inside,
and surpassing in every respect every other great public building in the
city. Most connoisseurs appraise the Temple of Venus and Rome as our
capital's most splendid structure, but I could never bring myself to admit
it superior to or even equal to the Baths of Titus. To enter this
surpassing building, always congratulating myself on my right to enter the
baths and use them; to be one of the courtly throng of fashionable
notables resorting to them: I could never take these things as a matter of
course.

Nor could I ever take as a matter of course the sight of the bulk of
Rome's nobility, gentlemen and ladies together, thronging the great pools
and halls or roaming about the corridors, passage-ways or galleries, all
totally nude.

Social convention is an amazing factor in human life. One may say that
anything fashionable is accepted and that anything unfashionable is
banned. But that does not help one to explain to one's self the oddity of
some social conventions.

Oddest of all our Roman social conventions is the contrast between the
insistence on complete concealment of the human figure everywhere else and
the universal acceptance of its display at the Thermae.

At home, if receiving guests, on the streets, at a formal dinner, at
Palace levees, at the Circus games or in the Amphitheatre, a man must be
wrapped up in his toga. Any exposure of too much of the left arm, of
either ankle, is hooted at as bad form, is decried as indecent.

So of our ladies, on dinner sofas, on their reclining chairs in their
reception rooms, in their homes, in their litters abroad, at the
Amphitheatre or at the Circus games, from neck to instep they are muffled
up. If one catches a glimpse of a beauty's ankle as she goes up a stair,
one is thrilled, one watches eagerly, one cranes to look.

Yet one encounters the same beauty the same afternoon in a corridor of the
Baths of Titus, with nothing on but a net over her elaborate coiffure and
the bracelet with the key and number of the locker in which the attendant
has put away her clothing and valuables and one not only cannot stare at
her, one cannot look at her, not even if she accosts one and lingers for a
chat.

I have pondered over this, the most singular of our social conventions,
and the most mandatory and inescapable; and the more I ponder the more
singular it seems.

Yet it is real, it is a fact. One meets the wives of all one's friends,
the wives of all Rome's nobility, naked as they were born; they mingle
with the men in the swimming pools, in the ante-rooms, in the rest-rooms,
everywhere except in the shower-bath cabinets and the rubbing-down rooms;
one swims with them, lounges with them, joins groups of chatting gentlemen
and ladies, chats, goes off, and all the while one cannot, one simply
cannot stare at a nude woman, any more than any of the women ever stares
at any man.

It is a social convention. But not the less amazing, although a fact.

One not only cannot scrutinize a woman, one cannot scrutinize a group of
women, even at a distance, even all the way across a swimming pool. So,
hoping to encounter Vedia in the gathering, I yet could not look for her.

I had met and talked with many of my acquaintances, notably Marcus Martius
and his bride Marcia.

Marcia, rosy as the inside of a sea-shell, with her gold hair confined by
a net of gold wire, was a bewitching creature, if I had been able to let
my eyes dwell on her.

She was as contained and slow spoken and soft-voiced as always, but she
was, for her, notably complimentary as to my share in the two fights;
thanked me warmly for defending her, declared that she would certainly
have been carried off, either as Xantha or Greia, or as a hostage for one
or the other, if I had not fought "like both the Dioscuri at once," as she
phrased it.

Martius corroborated her opinion of my services to them and thanked me
warmly.

Delayed by chats with friends and acquaintances, held up by distant
acquaintances and even by persons hardly known to me by sight, who
congratulated me on the Emperor's public championing of me against my
powerful Sabine neighbors, I felt my strength ebbing and sometimes saw a
gray blur between my eyes and what I looked at.

I was, in fact, so weak that I nearly fainted when, unseen in the swarm of
bathers until he was close to me, I encountered Talponius Pulto, tall,
handsome, disdainful, sneering and malignant as usual. From his proximity
I escaped as unobtrusively as I could and as promptly.

The cold douche and a swim in the cold pool had revived me. Also, in the
cold pool I had encountered Nemestronia, still personable enough at
eighty-odd to mingle daily with her social world, as nude as they, and
enjoy herself thoroughly. Yet, at her age, she knew she looked better when
under water, and spent most of her time in the pools. She and I did some
fancy swimming together, while she questioned me about my health.

I did not spend any more time than I could help between the cold pool and
the tepid pool; no more at least than importunate acquaintances exacted of
me.

In the tepid pool I felt, somehow, weaker and more relaxed than at any
time since I had gone out the previous morning. The effect of the
Emperor's favor, the effect of the cold plunge, were wearing off: mind and
body were losing tone. I swam languidly, alone, on my back and so swimming
found myself about one third of the way from the upper end of the pool and
about midway of its width. I was staring up at the panels of the vaulting,
relishing the beauty of the color scheme, the gold rosettes brilliant
against the deep blue of the soffits, set off by the red of the coffering.

So swimming and staring my eyes roamed downward to the great round-headed
coved window above the gallery. The railing of the gallery had a sort of
wicket in it, by which bathers could emerge one by one on to the bracket-
like platform which overhung the pool at that end, for use as a take-off
for a high dive.

Suddenly, on this diving-stand, poised for her dive, outlined against the
window behind her, I recognized Vedia; Vedia, my angered sweetheart, rosy
as Marcia, more lovely, and nude as Venus rising from the sea.

Seeing her thus, and seeing her thus unexpectedly, woke in me a volcanic
outburst of conflicting emotions altogether too much for my weakened
condition.

I fainted.

When I came to I felt weak and queer and did not at first open my eyes. I
heard subdued voices all about me, as of an interested crowd; I felt all
wet, I felt the cold of a wet mosaic pavement under me, but my head and
shoulders were pillowed on a support wet indeed, as I was, but soft and
warm.

I opened my eyes.

I realized that my head was in Vedia's lap, for I saw above me her
dripping breasts and, higher, her anxious face looking down at mine.

I fainted again.




CHAPTER VIII

THE WATER-GARDEN


Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know. For after I began
to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew
longer, I was too weak to move a muscle or to utter a syllable. I lay,
flaccid, in my big, deep, soft bed, very dimly aware of Occo or of
Agathemer hovering about me, generally recalled to consciousness by an
eggspoonful of hot spiced wine being forced through my slow-opening lips
and teeth.

How many times I was sufficiently conscious to know that I was being fed,
but too ill for any thoughts whatever, I cannot conjecture. When I began
to have mental feelings the first was one of dazed confusion of mind, of
groping to recollect where I was and why and what had last happened to me.

When I recalled my last waking experience I lay bathed in sleepy
contentment. I could think connectedly enough to reason out, or my
unthinking intuitions presented to me without my thinking, the conviction
that, if Vedia could recognize me in a big pool among scores of swimmers,
if her perceptions in regard to me were acute enough and quick enough for
her and her alone to notice that I had fainted in the water, if she cared
enough for me and was sufficiently indifferent to what society might say
of her, for her to rescue me and sit down on the pavement of the
_tepidarium_ and pillow my wet head on her wet thighs till I showed signs
of life, I need not worry about whether Vedia cared for me or not. I was
permeated with the conviction that, however difficult it might be to get
her to acknowledge it, however great or many might be the obstacles in the
way of my marrying her, Vedia loved me almost as consumedly as I loved
her.

In this frame of mind I convalesced steadily, if slowly, incurious of the
flight of time, of news, of anything; content to get well whenever it
should please the gods and confident that happiness, even if long
deferred, was certain to follow my recovery.

After I could talk to Occo and Agathemer and seemed to want to ask
questions, which both of them discouraged, one morning, on wakening for
the second time, after a minute allowance of nourishment and a refreshing
nap, I found Galen by my bedside.

He looked me over and asked questions, as physicians invariably do,
concerning my bodily sensations. After he seemed satisfied he asked:

"My son, were you ever ill before you were hit on the head in your recent
affrays?"

"Never that I remember," I answered.

"I judge so," he said. "If you had not been blessed with the very best
physique and constitution you would have died in your friend's litter on
the Salarian Highway. Thanks to your general strength and healthiness, and
thanks, to some extent, to my care and that of my colleagues, you are
alive and on the way to complete, permanent recovery and to long life with
good health. But you very nearly committed suicide when you went out and
about contrary to my orders. I say all this solemnly, for I want you to
remember it. If you disobey again, you will, most likely, be soon buried.
If you obey you have every chance of getting so well that you can safely
forget that you ever were ill.

"But, until I tell you that you are well, do not forget that you are ill."

"I shall remember," I said, "and I shall be scrupulously obedient."

"Good !" he ejaculated. "I infer that you find life worth living."

"Very well worth living," I rejoined devoutly.

"Then listen to me," he said. "You must remain abed until I tell you to
get up; when you first get up, it must be for only an hour or so. You must
not attempt to go out until I give you permission. You must not risk
eating such meals as you are used to. You must take small amounts of
specified foods at stated intervals. Agathemer will see to all that, with
Occo to help him. Do you promise to acquiesce?"

"I promise," I said.

"Remember," he cautioned me, "that the number, variety and severity of the
blows rained on you in your two fights were so great that you were almost
beaten to death. You had no bones broken, but the injury to your muscles
and ligaments was sufficient to kill a man only ordinarily strong, while
the blows affecting your kidneys, liver and other internal organs were in
themselves, without the bruising of all your surface, enough to cause
death. I had you convalescing promptly and rapidly; you went out and
overstrained all your vitalities. Your recklessness almost ended you. You
were far nearer death in your relapse than at first, and that is saying a
great deal. If you obey me you will certainly recover. If you disobey you
will probably kill yourself."

"I shall take all that to heart," I said. "I have promised to be docile:
I'll keep my word and obey my slaves as if every day were the Saturnalia."

"Good!" he exclaimed. "You are getting better."

He looked me over again and asked:

"Is there anything you want?"

"I want to see Tanno," I said.

"You shall the day after tomorrow," he promised, "or perhaps tomorrow, if
I find you improving faster than I anticipate."

Actually, after a brief visit from him the next day, Tanno was ushered
into my sick-room.

My first question was about my tenants. Not one such tenant-farmer in a
million would ever have a chance of being personally presented to Caesar.
They had been awestruck when I told them of their amazing good fortune.
They had said almost nothing. But I knew that they were, all nine of them,
as nearly rapt into ecstasy as Sabine farmers could be at the prospect of
personally saluting Caesar in his Palace, in his Audience Hall on his
throne. I had been too inert to worry about anything, but I almost worried
at the thought of their disappointment, through my relapse.

Tanno told me that he, knowing the Emperor's character pretty well, had
taken it upon himself to have them passed in with him as the Emperor had
ordered, and had himself asked permission to present them and had
presented them. The next day, he said, everyone of them had returned home.

I heaved a deep sigh of relief: my tenants and my Sabine Estate were off
my mind; I might be entirely easy about all things in Sabinum.

He then told me what a brilliant success Marcia was among the pleasure-
loving, novelty-loving, luxurious high-living set in our city society.

"Since the enforcement of the old-fashioned laws relaxed and became a dead
letter and some were even repealed," he said, "not a few men of equestrian
rank have married freed-women and such occurrences no longer cause any
scandal or much remark. But the results are not generally productive of
any social success for the ill-assorted pair.

"I have known a few freedwomen married to men of wealth, and equestrian
rank, who gained some vague approximation of social standing among the
wives of their husbands' friends. But Marcia is the first freedwoman I
ever knew or heard of to be treated, by everybody and at once, as if she
had been freeborn and since birth in her husband's class. Martius has not
brought this about, or aided much; he is a good enough fellow, but he has
no social qualities; for all the power he has of attracting friends he
might as well be an archaic statue. Marcia has done it all. She's a
wonder."

Then he told me of Murmex: how he was already rated Rome's champion
swordsman; how the Palace Palaestra was jammed with notables eager to see
him fence, how magnates competed for invitations to such exhibitions, how
Murmex was overwhelmed with attentions of all kinds from all sorts of
people, had had a furnished apartment put at his disposal by one admirer,
a litter and bearers presented him by another, already saw his domicile
crowded with presents of statuary, paintings, furniture, flowers and all
possible gifts, how he was an immediate and brilliant success with all
classes, even the populace talking of him, crowding behind his litter, and
demanding him for the next public exhibition of gladiators.

That such luck had befallen a man whom I had presented to Court augured
well for me, indubitably.

After I had been out of bed an hour or more for several consecutive days
Galen said to me:

"You are almost well enough to be about, but not quite. If you go back to
your habitual hours of sleep you will fret and fidget indoors, and you are
not yet sufficiently recovered to resume your normal life. You need fresh
air. I have considered what is best and what is possible. I have talked
with your friend Opsitius. Through him I have arranged for you to have
short outings in this manner. On fair days if you feel like going out you
may call for your litter. In it you must keep the panels closed and the
curtains drawn. Agathemer will give your bearers directions. Nemestronia
has offered you the use of her lower garden. You are to have it all to
yourself, whenever you want it, as long as my directions to Agathemer
permit you to remain in it; and you need not remain a moment unless you
enjoy being there."

I understood without asking any questions. Nemestronia's palace was one of
the most desirable, magnificent and spacious abodes in Rome. Her father,
who had been accustomed to say that he was too great a man to have to live
in a fashionable neighborhood, that any neighborhood in which he settled
would thereby become fashionable, had bought a very generous plot of land
nearly on the crest of the Viminal Hill and had there built himself a
dwelling which was at once noted among the dozen finest private dwellings
in the Eternal City. In one respect it was preëminent. From its lofty
position it had, down the slope of the hill, a wide view over the city and
this view was unobstructed, for below his palace Nemestronius had had laid
out six separate gardens, two large and four small. Next the house the
ground fell away so sharply that he had been able to create a terraced
garden, the only private terraced garden in Rome, extending across the
entire rear of his palace and with three terraces, from the uppermost of
which the view was almost as good as from the upper windows of the
mansion. Below this, each extending along but half the length of the
terraces, was a grass-garden, where it was possible to play ball-games, it
being a mere expanse of sward shut in by high walls covered with flowering
vines; and a formal garden, in the fashionable style. Below the grass-
garden was one of similar size, all flower-beds, to supply roses, lilies,
violets and other staple blossoms for his banqueting-hall, below the
formal garden was one called the wild-garden or shrubbery-garden, like the
grass-garden in being covered with sward almost from wall to wall, but
unlike it, in that it had four shade trees, no two alike, and many
flowering shrubs of all kinds and sizes. Lastly below these two was the
water-garden, the same size as the terraced garden, taken up with
fountains and pools, and all gay in season, with the flowers which thrive
in or beside ponds and pools. It had also eight beautiful lotus trees.

High walls, through which one might pass from one to the other only by
gates generally shut fast, separated and enclosed these gardens, for their
creator's intention was to enjoy the peculiar charm of each undistracted
by the contrasting charms of the others. From the upper gardens it was
possible to see, to some extent, into those lower down the hill; but, from
the lower, one could see nothing of those above.

One side of the property was flanked by a street, a mere narrow, walled
lane on which no dwelling opened. Along this were posterns in the wall,
giving access to or exit from the terrace-garden, the formal-garden, the
wild-garden and the water-garden.

I understood at once what I later heard from Agathemer. The water-garden
was to be mine for my airings. I was to leave my litter at its postern in
the unfrequented lane and reenter my litter there.

There I went next day and revelled in the beauty of the garden, in the
sunshine, in the breeze and in the sensations of returning health and
strength which inundated me. There I went for some days in succession
similarly.

On the eighth day before the Kalends of August Galen came to see me, not
early in the morning, but about the bath-hour of the afternoon. He seemed
well pleased with his inspection of me and with my answers to his
questions.

"You are practically well," he said, "and much sooner than I anticipated.
I am tempted to tell you to return to your normal routine of meals, eating
what you please; and to give you permission to resume your usual social
activities But I think it better, in a case like yours, to wait a month
too long rather than to be a day too soon. So I shall enjoin an adherence
to your diet and a continuance of your long rest hours and brief outings
for some days yet."

He had me summon Agathemer and repeated to him much of what he had said to
me.

"He might go out at once," he said, "but we had best be cautious. Limit
him to morning outings in Nemestronia's gardens. He may, however, see
friends, one at a time, according to his wishes and your directions. And
be particular as to his diet. Give him more of each viand at each feeding.
Feed him as soon as he wakes. Then time the feedings two hours apart. Are
your _clepsydras_ [Footnote: water-clocks] good?"

"Of the best," I interjected. "My uncle was a fancier of time-keepers and
had one in every room, and no two alike in ornamentation, all beautifully
decorated."

"The ornamentation doesn't matter," said Galen, impatiently. "Do they keep
time with anything approaching accuracy?"

"As near accuracy," I said, "as any _clepsydras_ ever made."

"Well," he said, "_clepsydras_ always work better when nearly full than
when nearly empty. When you feed him have a full _clepsydra_ handy and
start it when he begins to eat. Then by it feed him again after two hours.
Keep to that interval and to the diet I have enjoined."

Next day I spent over three hours in Nemestronia's water-garden, Tanno
with me for most of the time. Twice, during the chat, Agathemer brought me
a tray with the drink and food enjoined for that hour of the day. Each
time I left not a drop or crumb: I was ravenous.

The following morning Agathemer let in to me, in that same garden, Murmex
Lucro, who thanked me for my good offices with Commodus and narrated his
triumphal progress of professional and social success ever since I had
seen him fence with the Emperor.

Agathemer did not permit Murmex to linger long, saying that it was against
Galen's orders. After I was alone and had eaten what he brought I basked
and idled happily, thinking of Vedia, entirely unruffled by the fact that
I had had no missive or message from her, considering her silence merely
discreet and judicious after her spectacular rescue of me in the
_Tepidarium_, and confident of seeing her as soon as I was entirely well.

While I was in this mood my hostess came to chat with me. Nemestronia, at
eighty-odd, was as dainty and charming an old lady as the sun ever shone
on. And as lovable as any woman alive. I loved her dearly, as all Rome
loved her dearly, and I ranked myself high among her countless honorary
grandsons, for her motherly ways made her seem an honorary grandmother to
all young noblemen whom she favored.

After a heart-warming chat she said:

"I must go now, by Galen's orders. Before I go I want to ask you whether
you are coming here tomorrow?"

"Certainly!" I cried, looking about me with delight. "Could there, can
there, be in Rome a more Elysian spot in which to feel health being
restored to one?"

She beamed at me.

"Be sure to be here," she said. "You will not regret coming."

Between naps that afternoon and before I slept that night I soothed myself
with the hope that I was, by Nemestronia's influence, to have an interview
with Vedia.

Next morning the weather was beautiful, the sky clear, the air neither too
cool nor too warm, the breeze soft and steady. Nemestronia's water-garden
appeared to me even more delightful than the day before. I admired the
lotus trees, the water-lily pads in the pools, the jets of the fountains,
the bright strips of flowers along the pools, particularly some water-
flags or some flowers resembling water-flags.

I was idling in the sun on a cushion which Agathemer had arranged for me
on a marble seat against the upper wall, nearly midway of the garden, but
in sight of the postern gate by which I had entered. So idling and
dreaming day dreams I let my eyes rove languidly about the scene before
me. While meditating and staring at the pavement at my feet I heard
footsteps on the walk and looked up.

To my amazement I saw Egnatius Capito approaching.

No wonder I was amazed. I knew him but slightly. I should never have
thought of asking to see him, as I had asked to be allowed to see several
of my semi-intimates. Agathemer had insisted that I postpone seeing them,
because an interview with any of them was likely to overtire me. I knew
that no one could have entered that garden without Agathemer's knowledge.
I could not conceive how Capito came to be there.

He greeted me formally and asked permission to seat himself beside me. I
gave it rather grudgingly.

He asked after my health and I answered only less grudgingly.

"I conjecture," he said, "that you are surprised to see me here?"

"I am surprised," I said shortly.

"Will you permit me to explain?" he asked courteously.

I could not be less courteous than he and signified my assent.

"Your secretary," he said, "is of the opinion that your illness, while
caused by your injuries in the affrays into which you were entrapped, was
greatly intensified by your chagrin at finding yourself embroiled with
both the Vedian and Satronian clans, and he also thinks that brooding over
the condition of affairs has delayed your recovery."

"I assumed all that," I interrupted, "but I cannot conceive why he has
talked to you about it."

Capito was always ingratiating. He gazed at me reproachfully, gently,
winningly.

"If I have your permission," he said, "I shall explain."

"Explain!" I cried impatiently.

"Agathemer," he went on, "has left no stone unturned to find some means
for placating both clans and for reconciling you with both. In pursuit of
this aim he has been cautious, discreet, tactful and secret. He has
covertly tried many plans of approach. It was intimated to him, truly,
that I had on foot a scheme which promised to succeed in reconciling both
clans with each other and he rightly inferred that I might be able to
arrange for reconciling both with you at the same time. I am confident
that I can, as I told him when he tentatively approached me and
unostentatiously sounded me on this matter. I told him that it was only
necessary that I have an interview with you as soon as might be. Believing
that an early dissipation of your embroilment would conduce to your quick
and complete recovery he arranged for me to meet you as I have."

While he was saying this my eyes roved about the garden. To my
astonishment I saw a man standing against the shut postern door, intently
regarding us as we sat on the marble seat conferring. In my half
convalescent state I had become used to acquiescence in anything and
everything, I was inert mentally and physically and my perceptive
faculties dulled and slow as were my intellectual processes. While
hearkening to Capito I gazed at the man uncomprehendingly, only half
conscious. I thought him a queer-looking fellow to be in Capito's retinue;
he did not look like a slave, but like a free man of the lowest class. I
did not recognize him, yet it seemed to me that I should; I did not like
the way he looked at us, yet I said nothing. He seemed to see me looking
at him, opened the postern, stepped through it and shut it after him. As
he went I was shot through with the conviction that I had seen him
somewhere before.

"If you have in you," I said to Capito, "any such supernatural powers as
you would need for success in what you aim at, if you have any reasons for
anticipating success, Agathemer was fully justified in what he has done.
If you can really accomplish what you seem to believe you can accomplish,
I shall be grateful to you to the last breath I draw. But I am skeptical.
Speak on. Convince me."

"I must first," he said, "have your pledge of secrecy for what I am about
to say."

"What sort of secrecy?" I queried, repelled and suspicious.

"If I am to disclose what I wish to disclose," he said, "you must give me
your word not to reveal by word, look, act or silence anything I may make
known to you, from your pledge until the termination of our interview."

I was uneasy, but curious. I gave my pledge as he asked.

He looked about, warily. He leaned closer to me. He spoke in a subdued
tone.

"It must be known to you," he said, "that many of us nobles, many men of
equestrian rank, many senators, are gravely anxious concerning the
Republic, gravely dissatisfied with the character and behavior, I might
say the misbehavior, of our present Prince."

"I don't wonder that you pledged me to secrecy," I blurted out. "You are
talking treason."

"Hear me to the end," he begged, "and you will find that I am talking not
treason but patriotism."

I grunted and he went on.

"Many of us are of the opinion that the Republic, which was never as
prosperous as within the past eighty years, is in grave danger of losing
much of its Empire, so gloriously extended by Trajan, so well maintained
by his three successors, if it continues to be neglected and mismanaged as
it is. To save the commonwealth and retain its provinces we must have a
Caesar competent, diligent, discreet and brave; and not one of these
epithets can be properly applied to the autocrat now in power. We feel
that he must be removed and that there must be substituted for him a ruler
who is all that the State needs and has the right to expect."

"Fine words," I said. "Masking a conspiracy to assassinate our Emperor."

He looked shocked and pained.

"Hear me out," he pleaded.

"I am curious, I confess," I admitted, "to learn what all this has to do
with reconciling Vedius and Satronius and regaining me the good graces of
both. I ought to terminate the interview, but I am weak. Go on."

"Naturally," he said, "both Vedius and Satronius resent what the Emperor
did and said concerning your entanglement in their feud and they are both
infuriated at their humiliation and at the effective means he took to tie
their hands as far as concerns you and to ensure your safety, as far as
they were concerned."

"Commodus," I interrupted, "is not altogether a bungler when he gives his
mind to the duties of his office."

"May I go on?" Capito enquired, mildly, even reproachfully and, I might
say, irresistibly. He was a born leader of a conspiracy, for few men could
be alone with him and not fall under his influence.

"Go on," I said. "I am consumed with curiosity to discover how their rage
at the Emperor could lead to a reconciliation between them."

"It is not obvious, I admit," he said, "but when I explain, you will see
how naturally, how inevitably a reconciliation might be expected to
result.

"You have seen, perhaps often, a peasant or laborer beating his wife?"

"Everybody has," I replied. "What has that to do with what you were
talking of?"

"Be patient!" he pleaded. "You have seen some bystander interfere in such
a domestic fracas?"

"Often," I agreed.

"You have also seen," he continued, "not only the husband turn on the
outsider, but the wife join her spouse in attacking her would-be rescuer,
have seen both trounce the interloper and in their mutual help forget
their late antagonism."

"Certainly," I agreed.

"Well," he pursued, "human nature, male or female, low-life or high-life,
is the same in essence. Vedius and Satronius are so incensed with Caesar
for balking their appetite for revenge on you that they are thirsting for
revenge on Caesar and ready to forget all their hereditary animosities and
join in abasing him. In fact, they have joined the league of patriots of
which I am the leader. And they are so bent on their new purpose that they
are ready to be hearty friends to anyone sworn as our confederate. I can
arrange to obliterate, even to annihilate forever, all trace of enmity
between you and either of them, if you will but agree to let your natural
inherent patriotism overcome all other feelings in your heart and aid us
to abolish the shame of our Republic and to safeguard the Commonwealth and
the Empire."

All this while I had been half listening to him, half occupied in trying
to recall where I had seen the man who had stepped through the postern. At
this instant, as Capito paused, I suddenly realized that he was the
immobile horseman whom we had twice passed in the rain by the roadside the
morning I had started from my villa for Rome. His hooked nose was
unmistakable.

Somehow this realization, along with the recollection of what Tanno had
said of the fellow, woke me to a sense of the danger to which I was
exposed by being with Capito and also to a sense of the craziness of his
ideas and plans.

I felt my face redden.

"You have said enough!" I cut him short. "I perfectly understand. You
think yourself the destined savior of Rome and the deviser of priceless
plans for Rome's future. You are not so much a conspirator as a lunatic.
Your schemes are half idiocy, half moonshine. I have pledged you my word
to be secret as to what you have told me. My pledge holds if you now keep
silent, rise from this seat and walk straight out to your litter, by the
same way by which you came from it. If you utter another syllable to me,
if you do not rise promptly, if you hesitate about going, if you linger on
your path, I'll call my litter, I'll go straight to the Palace, I'll ask
for a private audience, I'll wait till I get one, I'll tell the Emperor
every word you have said to me. If you want protection for yourself from
my pledge, leave me. Go!"

He gave one glance at me and went.




CHAPTER IX

THE SQUALL OF THE LEOPARD


When he was gone, when I had seen the postern door shut behind him, I felt
suddenly weak and faint. I was amazed to find how exhausted I was left by
the ebbing of the hot wave of indignation and rage which had surged
through me as I revolted from his absurd and contemptible proposals. I
felt flaccid and limp.

At this instant Agathemer brought me a tray of food. My impulse was to
burst out at him with reproaches for having, without consulting me,
presumed to arrange for me an interview with a man not among my intimates.
But I was so enraged that I dreaded the effect on me, in my weakened
state, if I let myself go in respect to rebuking my slave. I kept silent
and was mildly surprised to find myself tempted by the food. I ate and
drank all that was on the tray, and Agathemer vanished noiselessly,
without a word.

I sat there, revived by the food and wine, feeling the weakness caused by
my rage gradually passing off and meditating on the sudden change in my
condition. Before Capito accosted me I had felt perfectly well and was
looking forward to resuming my normal life next day, to going to the
Palace Levee, to enjoying a bath with my acquaintances at the Thermae of
Titus. Since Capito had left me I had felt so overcome that I was ready to
look forward to some days yet of strict regimen and isolation.

Thus meditating I was again aware of footsteps on the walk.

I looked up and was more amazed than when I had caught sight of Capito.
Approaching me, but a few paces from me, was one of the most detestable
bores in Rome, a man whom I sedulously avoided, Faltonius Bambilio. His
father, the Pontifex of Vesta, was an offensively and absurdly unctuous
and pompous man. His son, who had already held several minor offices in
the City Government, had been one of the quaestors the year before, and so
was now a senator. But he was, as he always had been, as he remained, a
booby. I do not believe that there was any man in Rome I detested so
heartily.

He greeted me as if he had a right to my notice and said:

"I was told that Egnatius Capito was in this garden."

"He was," I replied curtly, "but he has left it."

"I certainly am disappointed," he said, seating himself by me, uninvited.
"I particularly wanted to speak to Capito at once."

"You might find him at his house," I suggested.

But Bambilio was impervious to suggestions.

"I wanted to talk to him and you together," he said, "but that can be
managed some other time."

I was about to reply tartly, but I remembered how my irritation with
Capito had affected me and recalled Galen's injunction that I must avoid
all causes of excitement and emotion. I held my peace.

Bambilio, as if he had been an intimate and had been specially invited,
lolled comfortably on the bench and gazed approvingly about.

"Fine garden, Andivius," he said. "Fine trees, fine flowers and I say,
what a jewel of a slave-girl, eh! Hedulio!"

I could have hit him, I was so incensed at his familiarity, I was already
choking with internal rage at Agathemer for having let anyone in to talk
to me in that garden, still more at his having done so without consulting
me and most of all that after doing so he had not made sure that no one
but Capito could pass the postern door. But I almost exploded into voluble
wrath when I looked where he indicated, saw a pretty, shapely young woman
in the scanty attire of a slave-girl picking flag-flowers into a basket
she carried, and recognized Vedia. That Agathemer's presumption should
have spoiled the interview with Vedia which she and Nemestronia had
manifestly arranged for us, that it should have exposed Vedia in her
undignified disguise to recognition by the greatest ass and blatherskite
in the senate, this infuriated me till I felt internally like Aetna or
Vesuvius on the verge of eruption.

Vedia, for it was she, had evidently been approaching me circuitously,
hoping to be noticed and hailed from afar. Now when she was near enough
for not merely a lover but for any acquaintance to recognize her, she
looked up at me over her basket as she laid a flower-stalk in it.

Instantly her face flamed, she turned away and went on picking flowers
diligently. After she had moved a few steps she sprang into the path and
scampered off like a child, her basket swinging, vanishing through a door
in the upper wall on my left.

"Neat little piece!" Bambilio commented. "Taking, and every part of her
pretty. Fine calves, especially."

I was by this time in a condition which, had I been old and fat, must have
brought on an apoplexy. But my hot rage cooled to an icy haughtiness, and,
though it took a weary, tedious long time, I kept my temper and my
demeanor, look, tone and word, managed to convey to him, even through the
thick armor of his self-conceit, that he was not welcome. He rose, said
farewell and waddled off to the postern. As soon as he was outside, more
rapidly than I had moved since I was felled in the roadside affray, I
walked to that door and made sure that it was bolted.

I was strolling unhurriedly back to the seat I had left and was perhaps
half way to it, when I heard, loud and clear, the long-drawn, blood-
curdling hunting-squall of Nemestronia's pet leopard; heard in it more of
menace, more of adult ferocity, more of the horrible joy of the power to
kill than I had ever heard before.

Instantly I comprehended what had happened. Either Agathemer when he took
off my tray or Vedia when she escaped had passed through the wild-garden
(probably it had been Vedia, who would not know that the leopard was
confined there), and had left a door imperfectly closed. The leopard,
which might have been asleep, under the shrubberies and invisible, had
roused and had passed through the unfastened door up into the terrace-
garden. This was the kind of morning on which Nemestronia would have many
visitors, the kind of weather which would tempt them to have their chairs
out on the upper terrace, the hour of the morning at which they would be
most likely to be out there. The leopard, I instantly inferred, was
stalking, not some hare, porker, kid or lamb, but her owner and her
owner's guests.

I disembarrassed myself of my outer garments, threw off my sun-hat, and,
clad only in my shoes and tunic, sprinted for the door into the wild-
garden, through it, through its upper door, which, as I had forecasted, I
found open, and out on the lower terrace. From there I could not see
anything on the upper terrace, but, as I cleared the door, I heard again,
rising, quavering, sinking, rising, the leopard's hunting cry from the
upper terrace. I sprang up the stair to the middle terrace, and half way
up that to the upper; but, when my head was about on a level with the
pavement of the walk along the upper terrace, I checked myself and moved a
hairs-breadth at a time; for the rescue on which I had come was a delicate
task and any quick movement might precipitate the leopard's killing-
spring.

Through the spaces between the yellow Numidian marble balusters I saw what
I had anticipated. Partly under the big middle awning, but mostly out in
front of it on the walk, were set a score of light chairs. On those
furthest out were seated nine ladies: Nemestronia, Vedia, Urgulania,
Entedia, Aemilia Prisca, Magnonia, Claudia Ardeana, Semnia, Papiria and
Cossonia. They were rigid in their chairs, white with terror and yet
afraid to move a muscle. Belly flat on the walk, about twelve paces from
them, crouched the leopard, moving forward a paw at a time. As I gained a
view of her she emitted a third squall.

I saw that I was in time and felt so relieved that I almost fainted in the
revulsion from my agony of anxiety. As I began to move my mind was free
enough to wonder how Vedia had found time to change from her slave-girl
disguise into a bewitching fashionable toilet. Among those leaders of
Roman society, the very pick of Rome's noblewomen, she showed her best and
outshone them all.

I moved evenly and steadily up the steps and along the balustrade till I
was past the crouching leopard and then on round till I was in her line of
sight and half between her and her victims.

She recognized me at once, the evil switching of her tail ceased, she half
rose; she began to purr, a purr that sounded to me as loud as the roar of
a water-fall in a gorge; she took a few steps towards me, then, suddenly,
she made a peculiar movement hard to describe, something like the
curvetting of a mettlesome colt, but characteristic of a leopard and
therefore like the movement of no other animal save a leopard or lion or
tiger; she leapt daintily clear of the pavement and struck sideways with
her forepaws. The antic perfectly expressed playful delight and
friendliness.

I recognized her mood and knew that I had not only distracted her from her
bloodthirst but had her entire attention. I knew what I must do, but I
raged at the ridiculous exhibition which I must make of myself before the
most fastidious and conventional of Rome's noblewomen. Yet, if I was to
save them, I must not hesitate. I threw myself flat on my side on the
pavement and made clawing motions with my hands and feet, the leopard
responded to my suggestion, capered again as before and, when close to me,
lay down before me on the pavement and began to paw at me, purring loudly
in her throat, now and then snarling softly. She played with me as she had
often played before, all her claws sheathed and her paws soft as
thistledown; mumbling my hands and forearms in her hot mouth, slavering
over them, yet never so much as bruising the skin with her needle-sharp
teeth. Yet I seemed to detect a subtle difference in her mood and, from
moment to moment, dreaded that she might claw me to ribbons or sink her
fangs in my shoulders or face.

All the while she was mouthing, pawing and kicking me I was raging at
Agathemer for having put me in a position where I had to make so
undignified an exhibition of myself before such an assemblage.

Presently I recognized that alteration in her mood which made it possible
for me to rise, take her by the scruff of the neck, and lead her off to
her cage.

When I had her inside I realized how hot, sweaty, dusty tousled, rumpled
and mussed I was. Her cage was under the vaulted arcade beneath the second
terrace. I was, when I shot its bolts, altogether out of sight of Vedia,
Nemestronia and the other noble ladies who had been spectators of my
tussle with the leopard. I did not want them to see me again in my
dishevelled and dirty condition: I sneaked into the house by the passage
from the arcade into the cellars and up the scullery stairs, made the
first slave I saw escort me to the guest-room I usually occupied when at
Nemestronia's and bade him summon bath-attendants and dressers.
Nemestronia had a store-room lined with wardrobes of men's attire
containing every sort of garment of every style and size. I was soon clean
and clad as a gentleman should be in a fresh tunic and in the garment I
had left in the water-garden, which a footman had fetched for me.

Then I went out on the upper terrace.

There I found the nine ladies, with some maids and waiters. Before the
ladies, facing Nemestronia, stood Agathemer; behind and about him
Nemestronia's six big, husky, bull-necked slave-lashers, the two head-
lashers with their many-lashed scourges.

I realized at once what had happened. Nemestronia had needed no one to
inform her that it was through Agathemer's negligence or mismanagement
that the leopard had escaped from the wild-garden. She had not waited to
ask me to investigate the matter and punish my slave. She had, like the
great noblewoman she was, assumed my acquiescence and approval and
summoned and questioned Agathemer. Before I appeared his answers had
convicted him. She did not look round at me as I joined the group and
seated myself in a vacant chair on her left, between Vedia and Claudia
Ardeana. As I seated myself she gave the order:

"Strip him and give him a hundred lashes!"

Now, then and there I found myself in the most cruel and painful situation
I had ever been in my life. Agathemer and I had been playmates almost from
our cradles; comrades, cronies, chums all our lives. Neither of us had
ever had a brother. Each had been, since infancy, a brother to the other.
I could not have loved a real brother any more than I loved Agathemer, nor
could he have had more implicit confidence in the goodwill of a blood
brother. I was, in fact, as solicitous for Agathemer's welfare as for my
own, and I rejoiced with his joys and mourned with his griefs. I would
have done anything to protect him and save him, as he had faithfully and
tirelessly nursed and cared for me in my illness.

But I knew that no explanations could ever make Nemestronia understand our
mutual relations or accept my views of them; to her a slave was a slave;
she felt as unalterable a gulf between free man and slave as between
mankind and cattle. I could only let her have her way, though I was
inundated with misery at the thought of Agathemer's approaching agonies. I
had been hotly wrathful with him and had meditated, as I dressed, what
sort of punishment would befit his fault: now that Nemestronia had ordered
him flogged my resentment against him had all oozed out of me and I was
filled with sympathy for him and scorn of my cowardice in not protecting
him. I glanced at him as the lashers stripped and bound him. He sent back
at me a glance which said, as plain as words:

"I am to blame. I know you are sorry for me. But give no sign, I must go
through this alone."

And I had to sit there while the head-lasher flogged him till the pavement
on which he lay was all a pool of gore, till his back was in tatters from
neck to hips, till he was carried off, insensible, perhaps dead.

Also I had to express my approbation of Nemestronia's orders, and had to
sit there and chat with the ladies, seven of whom were inclined to be
facetious over the figure I had cut sprawling on the mosaic walk, tussling
with that abominable leopard. They thanked me for saving their lives, or
at least, the life of some one of them. But they were sly about my comical
appearance while the leopard mauled and tousled me.

Two did not speak.

Vedia was cold and mute and spoke only when she rose, excusing herself to
Nemestronia and calling for her litter first of them all.

Nemestronia was so weak from the reaction after her fright and so
unwilling to display her weakness that she hardly spoke, limiting herself
to the brief words courtesy demanded.

When I reached home I forgot everything else in my solicitude for
Agathemer. I not only called for my own physician, but sent urgent
messages summoning Galen and Celsianus. Celsianus was affronted at the
suggestion that he stoop to prescribe for a slave and incensed at having
been called in haste for such a trifle: but Galen, who came in while
Celsianus was expressing his indignation, diverted his mind at once by
rejoicing that I was sufficiently recovered to take that much interest in
one of my slaves. He made haste to see, inspect and assist Agathemer: when
he was somewhat relieved and we had left him abed with Occo to watch him
and with injunctions that quiet was the best medicine for him, Galen
turned to me.

"You have had a shock," he said, "and a superabundance of excitement. Tell
me all about it."

When I had told him what had happened, omitting only Vedia's disguise and
her presence in the water-garden, he said:

"I certainly should not have prescribed any such excitements and efforts
as medicaments for a case like yours. But it sometimes happens that being
startled accomplishes more towards a cure than long rest can. Your
perturbation of mind and activity of body has cured you. You are, as far
as I can judge, well. I am of the opinion that you may safely eat and
drink what you like in moderation, rest only as you please and may resume
your normal life."

I was, naturally, much pleased, but had no impulse to resume my habits
that day. I kept indoors, denied myself to all visitors, slept long after
Galen had left, ate a moderate dinner and went early to bed.

Next day I went through the normal routine of a Roman of my rank. The
story of the leopard had been noised about and the husbands of the ladies
concerned every one came to salute me at my morning reception and to thank
me for my miraculous intervention, as they called it. As six of the eight
were senators my atrium had an aspect seldom seen at the reception of a
man of equestrian rank.

At the Palace I found the tale of the leopard had reached the ears of the
Emperor. He congratulated me, saying:

"You are not only a good fighter, Hedulio, but also incredibly bold and
marvellously favored by the gods."

Tanno was at the Palace to say farewell for the summer, as he was off for
Baiae to enjoy the scenery and sea-breezes.

"I envy you," said Commodus. "I must remain, here many days yet to get rid
of the most pressing matters on my crowded files of official papers."

After the Palace levee was over I went to Vedia's mansion and tried to see
her, but was rebuffed, the porter declaring that, by her physician's
orders, she was denying herself to all visitors.

At home I found Agathemer still suffering terribly, but without fever,
with no sign of proud flesh anywhere on his flayed back and not only
entirely able to talk to me but eager to do so. We had a long talk on the
entire subject of our peculiar relations as a master and slave who were
more like brothers. He assured me that I had done just right to act as I
had and he begged my pardon for his blunders in arranging to have Capito
admitted to talk to me, in arranging it without my permission or even
knowledge, in neglecting to guard the outer door of the garden and so
admitting Bambilio, and in causing the escape of the leopard. I heartily
forgave him, told him to forget all that, that I forgot it all and, on my
side, begged his forgiveness for his agonies. He said there was nothing to
forgive: that my uncle's injunctions had compelled my leaving him a slave
and the rest had been his fault, not mine.

I told him that I would do anything in my power to make him well,
comfortable and happy, except setting him free, from which I was
restrained by my uncle's behests.

He asked to be allowed to return to Villa Andivia as soon as the
physicians pronounced him fit to travel.

I agreed: commanded that my travelling carriage, which Marcus Martius had
returned to me, should be put in order and prepared for the journey; and
consulted Galen, who came of his own accord to see Agathemer two days in
succession. On his third visit he gave Agathemer permission to travel by
carriage the next day and he accordingly set off for Villa Andivia on the
Ides of August.

Each day I had spent most of my afternoon at the Baths of Titus. Each
afternoon I had seen Vedia at a distance, but she had always taken pains
to avoid me, and one cannot pursue or seem to pursue, a lady in the
Thermae.

Each day, also, I had called to see her at her house; each day I had been
rebuffed. On the morning of the nineteenth day before the Kalends of
September one of the runners brought me a letter. It read:

    "Vedia gives greetings to Andivius. If you are well I am well also."

But this formal opening altered at once to familiar writing.

    "You are acting like a silly boy. As things are, both in my cousins'
    clan and in that of my late husband, I cannot receive you at my house,
    and you ought to have sense enough to realize that without being told.
    Be patient and I shall arrange for an interview with you. Please avoid
    me at the Baths, as I have you.

    "Farewell."

This letter greatly encouraged me and I felt so elated that I really
enjoyed life for the next few days, which were filled up with a reception
of my own each morning, a round of receptions to salute magnates, my
salutation to the Emperor, a lunch always with some friends, a long nap at
home, a lingering afternoon at the Baths of Titus, and a jolly dinner at
some friend's house, for I was invited out twice each day.

On the seventh day before the Kalends of September, as I was on my way to
the Palace levee, a runner inconspicuously clad ranged himself alongside
my litter and handed me a letter.

It read:

    "She whose handwriting he will recognize gives greeting to Hedulio.
    Take care! Do not let anyone see this letter; take care to seem
    negligent and uninterested as you read it.

    "A conspiracy against the life of Caesar has been detected and
    reported. Its leader is said to be Egnatius Capito. As some informer,
    sponsored by Talponius Pulto, claims to have seen you in Capito's
    company, you are implicated. Save yourself. Do not return home. Do not
    go to the Palace, order yourself carried immediately to the
    Querquetulan Gate. On the way there purchase a raincloak and an
    umbrella hat and whatever else may be needful for your journey.
    Outside the _Porta Querquetulana_, in front of Plosurnia's tavern, you
    will find one of the fastest horses in Italy, a blood-bay, noticeable
    for light-blue reins with silver bosses, his saddlecloth light-blue
    with a silver edge. Descend from your litter in front of the tavern,
    accost the man holding the horse, say to him:

    "'Is this the leopard-tamer's horse?'

    "He will reply:

    "'It is.'

    "Then say:

    "'I am the leopard-tamer.'

    "He will then allow one of your spare bearers to take the horse.

    "Divest yourself of your toga then, not sooner. Equip yourself for
    your journey. Mount and order your bearers to take your empty litter
    home. Follow the Praenestine Highroad till it meets the _Via
    Labicana_. Then take the first crossroad to the Highroad to Tibur.
    From Tibur press on to Carseoli. Prom there return to Villa Andivia as
    you judge best. Provide for yourself thereafter as best you may.

    "Farewell."

I recognized Vedia's handwriting. I trusted her implicitly. I was far more
elated at her concern for me than I was depressed at my impending ruin.
Somehow the fact that she had taken the trouble not only to warn me, but
to think out for me all the details of a plan of at least temporary
escape, the inference that she hoped, hoped against hope, that I might be
somehow saved, heartened me amazingly; so that I was rather inspirited at
the prospect of adventure than daunted by the shadow of inescapable doom.
I gathered myself together, determined to take as much advantage as
possible of Vedia's warning, and of the respite it afforded me. I resolved
to follow her suggestions. I had set out for the Palace unusually early. I
had plenty of time. I ordered my bearers to carry me through the heart of
the City down the whole length of the _Vicus Tuscus_ to the meat market.

I should, I suppose, have been in an agony of vain regrets; I rather
expected from moment to moment to be drowned in an inundation of such
sensations, I was more than a little surprised at my actual feelings. Here
I was, hitherto a wealthy Roman nobleman in excellent standing with my
fellows, my superiors and the Prince; from now on a hunted fugitive and
not likely to postpone my last hour more than a few days. I was,
presumably, viewing the throbbing heart of glorious Rome for the last
time. I should have felt chief mourner at my own funeral. Actually I
relished, I hugely enjoyed, every pace of my progress through the filling
streets, where the passers-by and idlers were still fresh, and lively
after a night's sleep and where everything was irradiated by cheerful
morning sunlight. I felt cheerful as the sunlight.

Beyond the Meat Market I had my bearers stop at the Temple of Fortune,
which I entered, there I prayed fervently before the statue of the
Goddess.

When I was again out in the market I bought two live white hens, young and
plump, and assigned one of my relief-bearers to carry carefully the basket
in which the old market-woman ensconced them, after I had paid her well
for her basket as well as her hens.

Then I had my men carry me down the straight empty street along the
southwest flank of the Circus Maximus. Half way along it I halted them
before the Temple of Mercury. This I entered and, bidding one of the
attendants lead me to the priest in charge at that hour, I requested him
to offer for me the two white hens and beseech for me the favor of the
God.

Outside I reëntered my litter and made my bearers trot all the way round
by the big and little Coelian Hills to the Querquetulan Gate. We passed on
this route many cheap shops. From one I bought a pair of horseman's high
boots, soft and supple and mud-proof. All the way I enjoyed hugely my
outing and the sights and sounds around me. From another shop one of my
reliefs brought me an umbrella hat which fitted me and a voluminous
horseman's raincloak which could not but protect anybody; at another I had
bought for me a wallet; at another flint and steel in a good horn case,
compact and neat.

Outside the Querquetulan Gate, which my bearers reached blown and
sweating, although the reliefs had changed at short intervals, we had no
difficulty in locating Plosurnia's tavern. The holder of the bay horse
with the blue and silver trappings recognized my pass-words and
surrendered his charge to one of my extra bearers. At the tavern another
lined my wallet with bread, sausages, olives, dried figs and cheese, while
I was changing into horseman's kit.

I put into the wallet my money, more than enough cash for my journey home,
and Vedia's letter. I then mounted, gave my boys their orders and set off
at an easy canter. I knew I must show no signs of haste until I was on the
Highroad, so I took my time about working round to it. Once on the _Via
Tiburtina_, where horsemen at a tearing gallop, going in either direction,
were too common a sight to cause any remarks, I let out my mettlesome
mount and covered the remainder of the twenty-four miles to Tibur not long
before noon.

Between the bridge over the Anio and Tibur are a number of hilltops, from
each of which one has a fine view of Rome, if the weather is clear and
bright. The weather was very bright and clear and the views very fine. At
each hilltop I checked my mount, wheeled him and remained so for sometime,
contemplating the magnificence I might never see again, the glory upon
which my gaze, most likely, would never again feast. I should have felt my
eyes fill with tears at each of these prospects, the viewing of which was,
each time, in the nature of a last farewell. Yet, somehow, most
irrationally, I felt anything but dejected, rather hopeful and full of
conjectures about my future, instead of being filled with forebodings of
doom, with sorrow for my hard fate.




BOOK II

DISAPPEARANCE




CHAPTER X

ESCAPE


At Tibur I put up at a clean little inn I had known of since boyhood, but
which I had never before entered or even seen, so that I felt safe there
and reasonably sure to pass as a traveller of no rank whatever. My
knowledge of country ways, too, enabled me to behave like a landed
proprietor of small means.

After a hearty lunch I pushed boldly on up the Valerian Highway and
covered the twenty-two miles between Tibur and Carseoli without visibly
tiring my mount. He was no more winded nor lathered than any traveller's
horse should be at the end of a day on the road. At Carseoli I again knew
of a clean, quiet inn, and there I dined and slept.

Thence I intended to follow the rough country roads along the Tolenus.
Stream-side roads are always bad, so I allowed two days more in which to
reach home, and I could hardly have done it quicker. The night after I
left Carseoli I camped by a tributary of the Tolenus in a very pretty
little grove. From Carseoli on the weather was fine.

About the third hour of the day, on the fifth day before the Kalends of
September, of a fair, bright morning, I came to my own estate. On the road
nearing it I had met no one. I met no one along the woodland tracks
leading into my property from that side: on my estate I met no one save
just as I was about to enter my villa. Then I encountered Ofatulenus,
bailiff of the Villa Farm. He, of course, was amazed to see me. I bade him
mention to no one, not even to his wife, that I had returned home.

"Be secret!" I enjoined.

He nodded.

I believed he would be dumb. Give me a Sabine to keep a secret; I'd back
any Sabine against any other sort of human being.

Ofatulenus took my horse and swore that no one outside of the stable
should know it was there or suspect it. I told him to lock the trappings
in the third locker in my harness-room, which locker I knew should be
empty.

I got from the stable to my villa without encountering any human being.
Outside I found Agathemer, as I had hoped I would, sunning himself on the
terrace.

He was even more amazed than Ofatulenus and began to exclaim. I silenced
him and questioned him as to his health. He told me that his back was
entirely healed and that, while any effort still caused him not a little
pain, he was capable of the customary activities of his normal life.

I then told him why I had returned home. He listened in silence, except
that he here and there put in a query when I omitted some detail in my
excitement.

When he understood my situation thoroughly he asked:

"And what do you propose to do?"

"I propose," I said, "to live here unobtrusively, visiting no one,
receiving no one and, by all the means in our power, arranging that as few
persons as possible may know of my presence here. There is not the
faintest scintilla of hope in my doing anything whatever. But if I merely
exist without calling attention to my existence there may be some hope for
me. No man accused as I am is ever allowed an opportunity to clear
himself: but it has often happened that, by keeping away from Rome for a
time, a man in my situation has given his friends a chance to use their
influence in his behalf, to gain the ear of someone powerful at Court, to
get an unbiassed hearing for what they had to say, to prove his complete
innocence and rehabilitate him. Vedia and Tanno will do all they can for
me. I have hosts of friends, not a few of whom will aid Vedia and Tanno as
far as they are able. By keeping quiet here I shall give my friends a
chance to save me, if I can be saved. If not, I shall here await such
orders as may be sent me, or my arrest, if I am to be seized."

"Is that your whole plan?" Agathemer queried.

"All," I said.

"May I speak?" he asked. "May I speak out my full mind?"

"Certainly!" I agreed. "Speak!"

"If you stay here as you propose," he said, "you will be arrested not
later than tomorrow and haled to your death, if not butchered at sight. At
most the centurion in charge might allow you an hour in which to commit
suicide. But if you remain here inactive your death is certain, you will
never see two sunrises.

"But I agree with you that your friends will do what they can and I
heartily believe that Opsitius and Vedia will move sky, earth and sea and
Hades beneath all, as far as their powers go, to save you. If they have
any chance of succeeding they will need more time than Perennis will give
them. If you stay here you will be dead before they can so much as lay
plans to gain them the ear of Saoteros and Anteros or some other Palace
favorite, let along groping through all the complicated intrigues
necessary to arrange for an audience with the Emperor when he might be in
a compliant humor.

"Your plan means certain death for you. I think I can save you if you will
put yourself in my hands. Will you?"

"I most certainly will," I said, "and without reservation. If you think
you can save me, tell me what you want me to do and I shall do it. I shall
follow your suggestions implicitly."

"Well," said Agathemer, "since remaining here means certain death and
since there seems a chance of final salvation for you through the efforts
of your friends and especially those of Opsitius and Vedia, since they
will need plenty of time to save you, if you can be saved, from every
point of view the right course of action is not merely inaction, not
merely hiding, but an immediate and complete disappearance. If you are
found you will be ordered to kill yourself or will be put to death. If you
cannot be found you cannot be killed or made to kill yourself. Since you
cannot be found you will stay alive until you can be rehabilitated with
the Emperor. If that cannot be done or is not done, at least you will be
alive. My deduction is, disappear at once and completely. You have many
times, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor or
small farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without being
recognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt in
earnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with,
vanish from here at once and completely."

"But how?" I queried.

"If you are to disappear," said Agathemer, "why should I waste time in
explaining how. Let us disappear together, leaving no trace and let us do
it at once."

"But," I cried, "I could never consent to anything like that! You are not
in any danger. You will be manumitted by my will and you can live safely,
comfortably and at ease. Why should I drag you into I know not what
miseries, hardships and privations along with me? Tell me what to do and I
will proceed to do it. But do you stay here."

"If I told you my plan," said Agathemer, "you could not carry it out
alone. My scheme for your escape and vanishment pivots on my disappearing
along with you. If you agree, as I beg that you will, we shall both be
safe, I hope and trust; alive, able to return here if it can be arranged,
able to live elsewhere, somehow, if it cannot be arranged. If you refuse
your assent, I shall die with you or soon after you; I am resolute not to
survive you."

"I agree," I said. "I am under your orders henceforth, not you under
mine."

Agathemer at once guided me into the house and upstairs to his rooms, for
he inhabited the guest-suite next my rooms, which had been my uncle's.

"The first thing to do," he said, "is for both of us to eat heartily, for
we do not know when we shall eat again. I have been choicy and whimmy
about my eating since I came back here and mostly my meals have revolted
me and I have left the _triclinium_ practically unfed, whereas I have
often been seized with imperative hunger between meals. I have an
overabundant supply of all sorts of tempting cold viands up here."

And, in fact, in the room he used as a reading and writing room, on a side
table, I found an inviting array of cold meats, jellies, cakes, and fancy
breads, with an assortment of wines. We ate till we could eat no more,
masticating our food carefully and taking wine in moderation.

Then Agathemer put up a liberal supply of bread and relishes in a small
linen bag, obliterated all traces of our meal and presence and went into
his dressing-room, where he stripped stark naked and rubbed himself down
with a rough towel, carefully disposing of his garments in his wardrobes.

From one of his tables he took a small silver case containing flint, steel
and tinder. Then we went into my rooms, where he stripped me, rubbed me
down, and disposed of my garments as he had of his. My wallet he took
pains to hide in the bottom of a chest, after emptying it and putting the
contents about so that each article was hidden in a different place and
none could be connected with the others or with the wallet. The little
horn case with flint and steel he retained.

The ante-room to what had been my uncle's bed-room and was now mine, had
on its walls trophies of hunting-spears and other weapons of the chase.
Agathemer selected two knives for killing wounded stags, dependable
implements, blade and shank one piece of fine steel, the handles of stag-
horn, fastened on with copper rivets.

With the bag of food, the two knives and the two tinder boxes we went up
my uncle's private stair to his library and reading room.

My uncle had had his own ideas as to nearly everything, usually much at
variance with other people's ideas. As to building his ideas, perhaps,
were less aberrant than his opinions on other subjects, but, certainly he
was as tenacious of them as of his other notions.

He held, in the first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor of
any house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He was
equally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for a
building to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three or
more stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of silly
extravagance and of a desire to appear different from one's neighbors. His
villa, therefore, was of two stories only.

But, on the other hand, he loved fresh air, light, and wide prospects from
his windows; also he spent most of his daylight reading or writing, or
both. To gratify to the full all his chief tastes at once he included in
the plans of his villa a sort of tower, at the northwest corner, rising
well above the remainder of the structure, so that the floors of its third
story were on a level higher than that of the ridge-poles of the roofs of
the other parts of the villa and from the wide windows of its rooms there
was an unobstructed view over the tiles of the villa upon the farm-
buildings and beyond them across the fields to the woodlands and the
forested eastern and southern horizon as well as a fine outlook down the
valley northward and across it westward.

In this third story of this tower he housed his library and there he spent
most of his time. It was reached by three stairs. One was connected with
the villa in general and was used by him when going down to meals in his
_triclinium_, or when escorting visitors up to his library, as he
sometimes did with his particular favorites; and this stair was also used
by such servants as he might summon to him while in his library or as
might have to go up there to attend to it in his absence. The second stair
connected with his living-rooms on the second floor, which rooms looked
northwestward, as he detested being waked early by the rays of the rising
sun and loved basking in the mellow radiance of afternoon sunlight. The
third stair is not easy to describe and was one of my uncle's oddest
eccentricities. It was inside a sort of minor tower built against the
tower in which his library was set aloft, which minor tower extended far
up towards the sky, like a great chimney. What was the primary purpose of
this minor tower I shall explain later. In it, however, was a narrow,
cramped, spiral stair, unlit by any window or loop-hole, unconnected with
the second or first floor of the villa, opening at the top into the
library and at the bottom into a cellar, a cellar so far down the hillside
that its vault was below the level of the floors of the cellars under the
villa in general. This stair my uncle had had constructed to enable him to
apply his idea that a master could ensure the diligence of his tenants and
slaves only if he was known to be in the habit of coming upon them
unexpectedly at any hour of the day, only if they never knew when he might
appear and so were spurred to continual diligence for fear he might catch
them idling. For my uncle, though he habitually spent his entire daylight
in his library, might at any hour slip down this stair, slip out onto the
northwestern slope from the villa through a door locked to all but him and
of which he kept the key, or might slip out southeastward or southwestward
or northeastward, through similar doors on the ground floor, reached by
passages built between the many cellars of the upper level of cellars
under the ground floor of the villa. By this plan and by popping out
sometimes many times a day, sometimes after an interval of many days, he
kept his underlings alert.

My uncle's tastes in respect to books were as peculiar as in all other
respects. He had a really magnificent library, including all the Greek
poets, all our own, and other noble works of literature, such as the
historians in both the Greek and Latin tongues; the orators, and the
writers on painting, sculpture, architecture and music.

But he paid more attention to his personal fads. He had a creditable
collection of all works on divination, a similarly inclusive assemblage of
works on the theory of government, and an almost complete array of the
writings of the Emperors, from the Divine Julius to the Divine Aurelius,
whose meditations he extolled.

But he extolled above all other Princes and authors the Divine Julius.

"Caius Julius Caesar," he was never tired of saying, "was, in all
respects, the greatest man who ever lived on earth. He was also the
greatest author earth has ever produced. His poems, his mimes, his
comedies, his dramas, compare favorably with the best of their kind. His
accounts of his wars, whether against the Gauls or against his domestic
adversaries, are models of narration, of lucidity, of terseness and of
style. His astronomy is the best manual of that subject in Latin. His
works on Engineering surpass anything of their kind in clearness and
preserve for the benefit of future generations more useful and original
ideas than ever before came from the brain of any one man. His works on
divination, particularly that on Auspices, excel everything previously
written on that most important of all human arts.

"But his two books against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful that
any man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his own
hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader,
so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and
contentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, in
the course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel of
Latinity, in a style not only pure and impeccable, but glowing and
charming, is astonishing. But it is downright miraculous that he should
have embodied in it the whole theory of government with all its principles
marshalled in their array with the most perfect subordination of
considerations of lesser importance to main principles. The two
Anticatones contain all that a ruler or any minister of a ruler need know
to guide him aright in his tasks. The First Book displays a complete
theory of internal policy, the Second of external policy. The two together
form a whole which is the most brilliant product of Rome's literary and
political genius."

In accordance with his high esteem for Caesar's masterpiece he had
possessed himself of a beautiful copy of it, written by the celebrated
calligrapher Praxitelides, upon papyrus of the finest quality. It was in
seven rolls, each book of Caesar's text occupying two rolls, the index a
fifth, and the commentaries of grammarians two more. The rollers inside
the rolls were of Nubian ivory, their ends carved into pine cones, each of
the fourteen representing the cone of a different variety of pine. Each
roll was enclosed in a copper cylinder made accurately to be both
watertight and airtight. The seven cylinders were housed in an ebony case,
inlaid with mother of pearl. I have never seen any literary work more
beautifully enshrined.

When Agathemer and I were in the library he shut and locked the door at
the top of my uncle's private stair, as he had the door at the bottom of
it. The two keys he hid far apart, where neither was at all likely to be
found easily or soon. He had laid the knives, tinder-boxes and bag of food
on a table. He went to the case containing my uncle's most highly prized
treasures. From it he took the ebony box, opened it and took out two of
the cylinders. From these he removed the rolls embodying the grammarians'
comments. These rolls he put back in the box, shut it, returned it to the
case and closed the case.

The two cylinders he had laid on the table by the things which he had
brought up stairs. Inside each cylinder he placed a knife, a tinder-box,
and a selection of the food. The bag, with what remained of the food, he
tied up again. He handed me one cylinder.

"Now," he said, "we are prepared to escape. My idea is to leave no trace
of how we leave this villa, to have no one see us leave, to have nothing
with us which could identify us after we have left. We are to go down the
secret stair, crawl out through the big lower drain pipe, hide in the
bushes till dark, take to the woods, hide by day, creep northward by
night, and, if we succeed in reaching a district where no one would
recognize us, press on northward boldly, passing ourselves off as runaway
slaves if anyone encounters us."

"We'd be locked up as runaway slaves," I said, "advertised, sold to the
highest bidder if unclaimed and henceforth kept in slavery."

"I'm in slavery now," said Agathemer. "You, if kept in slavery, would at
least be alive and in no danger of being recognized."

"Let us go," said I.

We looked at each other and burst out laughing. We made a sufficiently
absurd spectacle, each stark naked, each holding a copper cylinder, as we
stood in that elegant and luxurious room. According to the fashion of the
time, which aped the ways of the young Emperor, we wore our hair
moderately long and as both had hair naturally curly, were perfectly in
style as to hair. Our beards, also, we wore clipped but not shaved, and
long enough to show a tendency to curl, as the Emperor wore his.

Our laugh over I gave a farewell glance about my little-used library. It
was then about the fifth hour. Agathemer gazing rather outside at the
landscape than inside at the room remained frozen stiff, staring northward
down the valley.

"We are barely in time," he said. "Mercury is with us and Fortune."

"Before I left Rome," I said, "I prayed to Fortune and sacrificed to
Mercury."

"Time well spent," he said. "Look there!"

Peering where he pointed I saw, where the road was first visible in the
distance, fully two miles away, a dozen or more horsemen, manifestly, even
at that distance, of military bearing: I caught, against the sunrays, a
gleam of crimson and a glint of gold; I conjectured a detail of Praetorian
Guards coming to arrest me or to put me out of the way.

Agathemer opened the upper door of the secret stair, which unlike most
doors, could be locked on either side, for my uncle always wanted to lock
the doors he used, whichever way he passed through them. After we had
passed this door Agathemer closed it behind us, and, as we stood in the
pitch dark, locked it.

We groped our way down the dizzying turns of the steep stair, Agathemer
going first and, at the bottom, whacking his knee-cap on the lower door.
This he unlocked and I found myself in a dim-lit cellar which I had
visited but twice before. Agathemer locked the stair-door behind us.

Now the minor tower, in which was the spiral stair, was built as a vent to
carry up into the air, far above the roofs of the villa, any miasma,
effluvium or exhalation from the drainage-water of the villa's baths,
kitchen and latrines. On the subject of harmful vapours from drains my
uncle was fanatical and to bear out his contentions he quoted from the
works of many celebrated philosophers and physicians, including those of
Galen.

Pursuant with his notions as to how to get rid of the exhalations from
drainage and to make certain that no whiff of any such vapours ever found
its way up any offset into his kitchen or any latrine or bathroom, he had
built in this small high tower a shaft reaching its top and full six feet
square all the way up. At its bottom it widened out into a chamber fully
twelve feet square, carried down below the level of the cellar floor to
form a cemented tank, vat, cistern or cesspool fully as deep as it was
wide. The outfall from this trap was by a terra-cotta pipe of considerable
size, its opening at such a point that the drain-water in the trap never
reached higher than a foot or so below the level of the cellar floor. The
various drainage-pipes from different parts of the villa were so led into
this trap-room that their lower ends were always under water, so that no
exhalations could ever pass up any of them.

To the bottom of the trap settled the solid matter and sediment from the
drainage-water. The trap was cleaned by slaves so often that the ooze in
it never rose high enough to escape down the outfall pipe and befoul the
Bran Brook. For cleaning out the trap-room had an outer door, of heavy,
solid oak, carefully locked, which when opened enabled the slaves
entrusted with this task to dredge or bale or scoop out the filth and
convey it off to be used as garden manure. There was also an inner door,
as heavy and solid as the other, opening from the cellar, which enabled my
uncle to inspect the trap at his convenience. This door Agathemer opened.

I peered in and, after my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, descried
the opening of the outfall drain opposite me. It was large enough for lean
men like me and Agathemer to crawl through, but certainly barely large
enough. I could see, after some moments, the lower ends of the drain
pipes, two dozen or more, dipping into the foul liquid which filled the
cistern. It was very foul, for since my uncle's death the cleaning out of
the trap had been neglected and the ooze came almost to the top of the
water.

Agathemer hunted about the cellar, found some bits of stone about the size
of apples, put them in the bag of food, tied up its neck again, and threw
it into the trap, where it sank out of sight. After it he threw in the two
keys.

Now was the moment for our plunge into the unknown. Agathemer's plan
implied that we must crawl a full furlong through the outfall drain. We
might be drowned, at any point of the crawl, by a rush of water from the
bath-tank. We might suffocate in the foul vapours of the drain. But,
plainly, Agathemer had pitched upon our only chance of escape, and we must
escape that way and at once or not at all.

Agathemer threw the two copper cylinders, one after the other, neatly and
deftly into the mouth of the outfall drain.

"Now," he said, "one of us must jump for that opening, and must cling to
it, his arms inside, his body in the ooze of the trap. The other must
stand on the narrow stone ledge inside this door, must contrive to slam
the door behind him so that it will shut fast and stay shut, must then, in
the pitch dark, jump for the shoulders of the other. If the drag of his
weight pulls the other down, both of us will drown in this deep trap in
the vile ooze. If the under man clings on, the upper must crawl over him
into the drain, pass back to him one of the cylinders and then we shall be
ready for our crawl down. Which goes first?"

"You choose," said I.

"Can you slam the door?" Agathemer queried.

I considered the door, the sill, the ledge inside, the jambs of the door,
its edges; stood on the ledge, went through the motions and concluded that
I could slam the door shut and not be knocked off into the ooze by its
impact or topple off because of the sill's narrowness. I said so.

"Then I'll go first," said Agathemer. "You are, even yet, far more
impaired in strength by your beating than I by my flogging. If I came
second you might not be able to hold on to the opening of the drain. I
know I can hold on, no matter how much filth is plastered over my head as
you crawl over me. I should not like the idea of defiling your head with
filth in crawling over you. Jump so that your clutching hands just reach
my shoulders; so that your weight will come on me gradually as you sink
into the ooze. Take your time about crawling over me. Be sure to pass back
to me one cylinder."

Then he drilled me as to the signals he would give me by pinching my feet.
When he was sure we both knew them he grinned a wry grin, and made a
whimsical boyish gesture with his uplifted right hand, took a careful
stand on the sill, balanced himself and jumped.

"I'm all right," he called back, "and ready for you."

Three times I tried to slam that door and failed to shut it. The fourth
time I found myself, my back against the shut door, my toes sticking out
over the edge of the stone sill, balanced in the pitch dark on a too
narrow ledge.

"Lean back against the door," Agathemer called, thickly. "If it gives it
is not shut."

It did not give.

I said so.

"Then no one will ever know how we got out," said Agathemer; adding: "Jump
when you are ready, but say 'now.'"

I jumped and my fingers caught his shoulders. He held on. My body sank
slowly through the ooze, which gave way with a sickening sliminess, until
I was in contact with Agathemer all the way to my toes. Then I began to
try to crawl up over him. I found it far harder than either of us had
anticipated.

All slippery as we were with the foul ooze it was a fearful struggle for
me to scramble up over him, I slipped back so often. After what seemed an
hour of effort and apprehension I had my head, shoulders and most of my
body in the drain and knew I had succeeded. I wriggled forward till I felt
my feet beyond the opening, then about as far ahead, pushing before me the
cylinders. When Agathemer touched my foot I pushed a cylinder past my body
and felt, with my ankle, that he pulled it back.

After that, escape was a matter of wriggling on down the drain. And
wriggling was not impossible, though excessively difficult and exhausting.
The drain was nowhere choked with silt, but all along was furred with ooze
and there was more than an inch of ooze along its bottom. In this,
hitching myself forward on my elbows by violent contortions, I slipped
back almost as much as I heaved forward.

Agathemer seemed to have as much trouble as I had and to find the effort
as exhausting. For he had instructed me that I was not to crawl forward
until he pinched my foot. One pinch was to mean "advance," two pinches
"rest." More than once he had signalled me to rest.

Our worst moment came somewhere near half way down the sewer. There I
encountered a cracked drain-pipe, the ragged edge of the broken terra-
cotta projecting into the sewer, its point toward me. I wriggled my
shoulders by it, though it gouged my shoulder-muscle on that side; but, at
my hips, it stuck into me so that I could not get past it.

Agathemer, behind, kept pinching my foot, signalling for me to go forward.
I bellowed explanations, but could not suppose that he could hear them in
that horrible tube. But he either heard or guessed, he never could be sure
which. Anyhow, he felt that we must get forward or perish. In desperation
he sunk his teeth into the soft part of the inner side of the sole of my
left foot. The pain made me give a convulsive wriggle and I scraped past
the obstacle, tearing my hip badly in getting clear.

From there on we wriggled frantically till I could see ahead a round patch
of light at the lower outfall of the drain.

It seemed an age before I reached the opening, but reach it I did. I lay
there, my head just inside, panting and guzzling clean air in great
gulping gasps. Agathemer pinched my foot. I slipped out into the oozy pool
below the outfall, slid out as quietly as I could and kept myself
submerged up to my chin, clutching my cylinder with one hand, pulling
myself clear of the drain and keeping my head out of the drainage by
holding to the stem of an alder bush growing by the brook's edge.

I came to rest, the sunlight dazzling my eyes, though the outfall was
shaded by willows above the alders, and looked for Agathemer. He, his face
purple, kept his head inside the sewer and I could see him suck in the
clean air in long gasps as I had.

At that instant there was a squawking above us and, through the alders,
came, quacking and flapping their wings, a hundred or more of my uncle's
valued white ducks. Their alarm made me peep through the alder stems. I
saw, not ten yards from my face, the legs of horses, heard their hoofs
thud on the roadway, descried men's feet against their bellies, recognized
the gilded edges of the boot-soles, the make of the boots, the gilt scales
on the kilt-straps, the gilded breast plates, the crimson tunics and
short-cloaks, the gilded sword-sheaths and helmets. There, just above us,
was passing the detachment of Praetorian Guards sent to arrest or despatch
me.

They clanked by us, never suspecting our proximity, though the ducks
resented our presence in their favorite pool and quacked at us
protestingly. They continued, in fact, to quack at us most of the time
until sunset, so that both of us were in an agony of dread for fear that
some passer-by might notice their voluble expressions of displeasure and
might take a notion to investigate to discover what was exciting their
wrath.

But no one was attracted by the ducks' noise and, if anyone passed up or
down the road we, where we were, did not know it.

We talked, at intervals, in whispers. Agathemer said that he had been
barely grazed by the broken drain-pipe and hardly noticed his scratches.
I, on the other hand, was in great pain from the gouge along my hip, and
hardly less pained by the tear in my shoulder. The water, under which I
had to keep up to my chin, dulled the pain of my wounds, but chilled me
till my teeth chattered, though the weather was hot; so hot in fact, that
the sunrays on my head seemed to scorch my hair, even through the willows
and alders. I was devoutly glad when the sunrays became more slanting and
the daylight began to wane, and the ducks, still quacking protestingly,
departed.




CHAPTER XI

HIDING


It was fully dark before we dared to leave our hiding-place and attempt
the risky venture of essaying to reach a safer shelter or refuge in the
forests without attracting the attention of any dog at any of the several
farmsteads which we must pass.

Agathemer led and I followed, my teeth chattering and the night insects
biting me severely. Hugging our precious copper cylinders we waded more
than waistdeep in the water, up the Bran Brook, sometimes all but
swimming, as we skirted some of the deeper pools. There was no moon and we
could see but little by the faint starlight. We had to go slowly, as we
could not swim and keep hold of our cylinders; and must not risk losing
one if Agathemer went over his head in a deep pool. It seemed to me that
we had been threading the curves of the brook for at least two hours when
I began to feel as if something were wrong. Even in the dark I had been
aware of a sort of recognition of each pool, shallow, riffle, bend, bank
or what not. Now, gradually, it came over me that I was among surroundings
as unfamiliar as if I had not been in Sabinum, or even in Italy.

I caught Agathemer by the arm.

"Where are we?" I whispered.

"Don't talk!" he warned.

But I insisted; for, as we were by now no more than knee-deep in the
water, I knew we must be well up towards the headwaters and it came over
me that we had not turned off anywhere as sharply as we should had we
turned up either the Chaff or the Flour.

"Are we going up the Bran?" I queried.

"Precisely!" Agathemer breathed.

I almost spoke out loud.

"This," I said, "is the last place on earth I'd expect you to guide me
to."

"Precisely," he repeated, "and it's the last place on earth anybody else
would expect me to lead you to or you to be in, by any chance; therefore
it's the last place in Italy where any one will look for you; therefore it
is, just now, the safest place in Italy for you. Come on, I know every
stone of this brook."

I followed him. His logic was good, but, on Ducconius Furfur's land I felt
hopelessly lost and overwhelmed by despair.

We had not gone far from where I had forced Agathemer to reveal his ruse,
when he turned round and whispered:

"This is the place. Here we leave the water. Follow me."

I was dimly aware of a blacker blackness before us, as of a big, tall
rock. This we skirted and then stepped out of the brook towards the left.
There we stepped into deep drifts of dead leaves.

"Here is bedding," said Agathemer, "such as Ulysses was content with after
his long sea-swim to the island of the Phaeacians. Perhaps we can get
along in such bedding."

Naked as we were we burrowed into the dead leaves, and, after a bit I felt
less chilly, though by no means warm.

Agathemer took from me the cylinder I had been carrying; opened one of the
two, a matter of some difficulty, as the top was so tight; sniffed at it,
and took from it some morsels of food: a bit of cold ham, a bit of cold
fowl and a bit of bread. These I ate, chewing them slowly. At the same
time he ate, as slowly, an equal share.

After eating we tried to sleep. I was too weary and drowsy to keep awake,
and too cold and too much in pain from the scratch on my shoulder and the
gouge on my hip to be able to sleep long. I got some sleep before dawn,
but not much.

Fortunately for us the night had been clear, warm and windless. Even so we
suffered severely with the cold; since the chilled air, of course, rolled
down the hillsides into the hollow along the bed of the brook, till the
valley was filled with thick mist and every leaf and twig dripped with
moisture. Through the mist the dawn broke pearly gray at first and then
iridescent; and, when the first sunrays penetrated the white haze and
gilded every leaf-edge, turning the tree-tops to gold and making every
waterdrop a diamond, no lovelier morning could be imagined.

The trees about and above us were mostly beeches, with many chestnuts and
a few plane-trees and poplars. We were in a clump of willows with thick
alders under them, so that, even with no other protection, we could not
have been seen from any distance. And we were most excellently protected,
being on a little island where the brook forked and flowed, three or four
yards wide and nearly a yard deep, round a huge gray rock, fully fifteen
yards across and nearly seven yards high, a bulge of worn stone, shaped
much like half a melon and almost as symmetrical. And, as one might lay
half a melon, curve up, and then split it with one blow of a kitchen-
knife, so this great rock, as if cleft by a single sweep of a Titan's
sword, was rent in half and the halves left about four yards apart. The
fracture was clean and smooth, except that a piece about two yards square
had cracked loose at the ground level from the southern half and lay
bedded in the mud, its top a foot or so above the earth, leaving in the
face of one rock a rectangular niche about a man's length each way, in
which cavity two men could shelter from the rain.

As soon as it was light enough to see I was for crawling into this little
cavern. But Agathemer restrained me.

"The face of the rock," he said, "would feel cold as ice to your skin. You
have, even if you do not realize it, somewhat warmed the leaves next you.
For the present we are least uncomfortable where we are. The dawn-wind
cannot get at our hides while we are under these leaves. Keep still."

He kept himself as much as possible under the leaves but wriggled nearer
the altar-shaped bit of rock. Half-sitting, half crouching by it, little
besides his head out of the heap of leaves in which he was, he opened both
cylinders and laid out on the top of the stone what food was in them. This
he divided into six equal portions, two he put back in each cylinder. We
munched interminably, making every morsel last as long as possible.

The food revived me, and even before the dawn-wind had died, the rays of
the sun began to make themselves felt. I began to be restless; Agathemer
again checked me.

"Keep still," he commanded. "As soon as the sun has dried the dew off the
leaves I can make you more comfortable. Just now we are best as we are."

I kept under the leaves, but I peered about. At each end of the cleft
between the two halves of the rock I could see the brook brawling by among
the worn stones. The line of the cleft was directly across the bed of the
brook; and, along the cleft, past the detached, almost buried, altar-
shaped stone, I descried, barely discernible but unmistakable, such a path
as is made by the bare or sandalled feet of even one human being following
daily the same track. I conned it. I judged that it was many, many decades
old and had been trodden daily for a lifetime or so, but that it had been
totally disused for at least a year and possibly for more.

I pointed it out to Agathemer and asked him about it.

"That," he said, "is part of what used to be the shorter and more used of
the two paths from Furfur's villa to Philargyrus's farmstead. Naturally,
since the Philargyrus farm has been detached from Furfur's estate and has
become part of yours, there must be very little intercommunication between
the farm and the villa and I judged that any slave going from one to the
other would avoid the more obvious path and sneak round the longer way.
Therefore I judged it safer to locate here, as this path is probably
totally unused."

"How did you know of it?" I queried.

Up to his neck in leaves, arms under too, only his head out, Agathemer
blushed all over his handsome face.

"Before Andivius won the suit," he said, "while Philargyrus was still
Furfur's tenant, I had an impassioned love-affair with one of Furfur's
slave-girls. We used to meet here, at first on moonlit nights, and, later,
when we each knew every inch of our way here and home again, more often on
moonless nights. I always waded up and down the bed of the brook, so as to
leave no scent for any dog to follow. I know this nook well and thought of
it the instant I began to plan an escape for you."

I said nothing.

"It is barely possible," he said, "that some one may use this path, even
if no one has passed along it for months. That is just the way luck turns
out. I mean to be invisible if anyone does come. There was no likelihood
of anyone coming by at dawn, and no possibility of doing anything if
anyone did come. Now it is warm enough for me to pick off the outer layer
of dew-wet leaves from whatever heaps of dead leaves are hereabouts. I can
gather the dry leaves into that little grotto. We can lie on a bed of
them, wrapped up in them we can cower under them, we can even pull our
heads under and be invisible if we hear footsteps approaching. You keep
still."

He then stood up and went off. After a time he returned with a great
armful of leaves, which he threw into the niche. After many trips he had
the niche almost full of fairly dry dead leaves. By this time the warmth
of the sun was making itself felt and I stood up and stretched myself. I
did not feel weak, but my shoulder and hip, where the drain-pipe had torn
me, and the sole of my foot, where Agathemer had bitten me, were decidedly
painful. Agathemer, solicitously, steadied me on my feet and led me to the
streamside. There I seated myself on a convenient rock and he bathed my
foot, hip and shoulder. There was no sign of puffiness or heat in any of
the three wounds, but all three were raw and sore. We had nothing with
which to dress them and Agathemer merely dried them as well as he could by
patting them.

Meanwhile, even in my misery and despair, even hungry, weak and cold and
in pain as I was, I could not but feel a gleam of pleasure at the
enchanting beauty of the woodland scene about our hiding place. I gazed up
at the bits of blue sky between the sunlit boughs, at the canopy of green,
at the tenderer green of the underwood, at the carpet of grass, ferns,
sedges and flowering plants which hid the earth and I almost rejoiced at
its loveliness.

Agathemer led me back to our retreat and ensconced me in the nook of rock,
on a soft deep bed of dry dead leaves, under a coverlet of more. Into the
heaps he burrowed. The warmth of his naked body warmed me a trifle. There
we lay still till dark. I slept, I think, from about noon till after
sunset.

While we could still see, Agathemer, making me keep flat as I was,
wriggled out of the leaves and pushed them aside from my head and face. We
then ate half our remaining food. As it grew dark Agathemer expounded to
me his plans.

"Last night," he said, "there was no sense in doing anything. Hiding and
keeping out of sight was the best thing we could do. But tonight I must
try to steal what we need most. The risk must be taken. If I do not return
you will know I have done my best. But I feel confident of returning
before midnight. I know every farmstead on Furfur's estate and all the
dogs know me. On your estate I not only know the dogs, but I have just
finished an inspection and I know the location of every dairy, smoke-
house, larder and oven, I might almost say of every loaf, cheese, ham,
flitch, wine-vat and oil-jar on the estate, not to mention every store-
room where I might get us hats, tunics, sandals, quilts and what not.

"If I cannot do it otherwise, as a last resort I'll wake Uturia and tell
her of our situation; she will help and will be secret. But I'll not
resort to her if I can help it. Her most willing secrecy will not be as
safe as her ignorance of our fate. No torture could surmount that."

I wanted to say "Farewell," but restrained myself and uttered a not too
gloomy:

"Good luck and a prosperous return!"

After that, I lay and quaked till long past midnight. Then, I seemed to
hear sounds which I could but interpret as heralding Agathemer's approach.
In fact he soon spoke to me from close by and I heard the unmistakable
blurred noise made by a soft and yet heavy pack deposited on the ground by
my bed of leaves.

"I've nearly everything I wanted," said Agathemer. "Keep still while I
untie the quilt I carried it all in, and find things in the dark."

Presently he said:

"Stand up, and I'll try to dress you."

In the dark his hand found my hand and he guided me so that I extricated
myself from the heap of leaves without hitting my head on the jutting roof
of rock and without slipping on the wet earth or stumbling from weakness.

In the dark he slipped over my head a coarse, patched tunic. (I could feel
against my skin the rude stitching of the patches.) Then he wrapped about
me a coarse cloak, also much patched.

"Now," he said, "stand where you are till I make some sort of a bed for
you."

He fumbled about in the dark, grunting and making, I thought, too much
rustling in the leaves. Presently he said:

"I've laid a doubled quilt on the leaves and packed them down. Give me
your hand and I'll arrange you on it. Then I'll cover you with another
quilt."

He did, deftly and solicitously.

I began to feel warm for the first time since I had sunk into the ooze of
the drain-trap.

Agathemer fumbled about in the dark for a while and then came near again
and felt me, making sure where my head was. He made me sit up.

"Smell that!" he said, "and catch hold of it."

I smelt ewe's-milk cheese and my fingers closed on a generous piece of it.
Then, he put into my other hand a big chunk of bread, not yet entirely
cold.

I bit the bread. It was Ofatulena's unsurpassable farm bread, half wheat
flour and half barley flour and at that more appetizing and flavorsome
than any wheat-bread I ever tasted.

"There is plenty for both of us," Agathemer said, "eat all you want, but
eat slow and be careful not to bolt a morsel."

He sat down by me and we munched in silence.

By and by he asked:

"Do you want any more?"

"No," I answered, "you judged my capacity pretty well. I am filled up."

"Don't lie down," he said, "I have a small kid-skin of wine."

We laughed a good deal before he made sure precisely where my mouth was
and put into it the reed which projected from one leg of the kid-skin. I
drank in abundance of a thin, sour wine, such as we kept for the slaves.
It gave me new life.

After that draught of wine I composed myself to sleep and went to sleep at
once. I knew nothing of Agathemer's doings after that and did not feel him
when he lay down by me. I slept till broad daylight.

When I waked Agathemer gave me a moderate draught of wine and all the
bread and cheese I chose to eat: also a handful of olives. Then he
displayed the total of his plunder: hats, with brims neither too broad nor
too narrow, the best pattern if one was to have only one hat, worn and
battered enough to suit us as being inconspicuous, yet nowhere torn,
broken or slit; a tunic and cloak apiece, about the oldest and most
patched in my villa-farm storage-loft, such as Ofatulena would hand out to
newly bought and untried slaves; three quilts, as bad as the cloaks and
tunics, yet, like them, fairly serviceable and far from worn out; the kid-
skin of wine, a whole loaf of bread and the remains of the one we had been
eating, what was left of a cheese and another whole; a little, tall,
narrow jar of olive oil; a small bag of olives; a tiny box full of salt,
the box of beechwood and about the size of a man's three fingers; a
whetstone, a pair of rusty scissors; two small beechwood cups; a little
copper dipper; some rags, old and worn, but perfectly clean; and a
flageolet!

"In the name of Dionysius!" I cried laughing, "why the flageolet?"

Agathemer laughed also.

"My hand," he said, "came on it in the dark while feeling for the
scissors. I could not resist bringing it. It is small, it weighs little,
it will not add to our burdens and, once far away from here, I can play on
it when we are lonely and so cheer us up."

"You appear," I said, "to have been able to help yourself as you pleased."

"No more trouble," said he, "than if I had walked out of the villa night
before last and poked about the out-buildings to see whether everything
was as when I inspected them by day; only three dogs barked, and they
quieted down almost immediately. I am sure I roused no one and am ready to
wager that every slave was as sound asleep as if I had not been there."

I lazily readjusted myself on my quilt and leaf mattress, tucking my quilt
close about me. The morning was still, warm and cloudy, not a ray of
sunshine visible, even for a moment, since sunset the night before.

"Time to dress your wounds!" said Agathemer.

He brought from the brook a cupful of water, and, with the smallest of the
rags, solicitously bathed the gouge on my hip. He pronounced it healing
healthily. He then anointed it with olive oil. The bathing and anointing
comforted me greatly. Then, he similarly treated my shoulder and foot.
When I was composed and covered he said:

"Now for the scissors!" and he sharpened them on his whetstone until he
felt satisfied that he could get them no sharper, then he clipped my hair
and beard, as closely as those scissors could. Then I sat up and clipped
him, awkwardly and unevenly, but effectively.

Hardly were we shorn when drops of rain began to patter on the leaves
above us. Agathemer wrapped his bread in the rags, put it between the two
hats and tucked it under the leaves in one inner corner of the little
grotto; bestowed the other things on it, or by it or in the other corner;
and then lay down by me and pulled his quilt over him, then managing to
cover both of us with leaves so that no trace of our presence would be
visible to any passer-by, yet we could breathe comfortably behind or under
our screen of leaves.

It rained all day, a sluggish drizzle, soaking the earth, but not
accumulating enough water on it to produce visible trickles flowing on the
surface. The air was perfectly windless, so that no rain blew in on us as
we lay; we were damp, but not wet.

Before dusk the rain ceased and a brisk, warm wind shook the drops from
the trees. We ate and Agathemer declared his intention of going on another
raid about an hour after dark.

"What are you after this time?" I queried.

"More food," he said, "all I dare steal. I must not steal too much from
any one place. I'll wager my pilferings of last night will pass, not
merely unheeded, but entirely unnoticed. Ofatulena herself is so scatter-
brained that she will never be sure that two loaves vanished from her
oven; I doubt if she will so much as suspect any loss. But I cannot repeat
that depletion of her baking tonight; she might talk. She is not quick-
witted enough to conjecture the truth, if she did her utter loyalty would
keep her mute; she'd impute the theft to some slave and likely as not have
an investigation and advertise her loss. If there happened to be a crafty
inspector with the Praetorians and if they have lingered, they might
suspect the truth, beat the woods for us and capture us. So I must take a
little here and a little there.

"Then I want another quilt for myself, and shoes for both of us. Is there
anything else you can think of?"

"Manifestly!" I said, "we need a slave-scourge, a branding-iron with the
long F for 'runaway', [Footnote: _Fugitivus_. The short F stood for _fur_,
"thief."] a brazier big enough to heat the branding iron and enough
charcoal to fire it once."

"What, in the name of Mercury," he whispered amazedly, "do you want of a
branding-iron and a scourge?"

"We are to pass as runaway slaves, if caught, according to your outline of
a plan," I said, "we had best do all we can to be sure of being thought
ordinary runaway slaves. Few slaves travel far from their owners' land
when they first venture to run away. We should be branded, to seem old
offenders.

"As for you, thanks to Nemestronia, your back is all it should be to help
play the part we intend. My back has no scars. You must scourge me till I
have as many as you."

In the late dusk, inside that grotto, under the dead leaves, I could see
the horror on his face.

"I scourge you!" he cried aloud.

"Hush!" I admonished him. "Scourged I must be, if I am to hope to escape
Caesar's agents as you have cleverly conceived that I might. Steal a
scourge and a branding-iron tonight, and let us be ready for the road as
soon as may be; we cannot set out northwards till my back is healed and
the brands on both of us, too."

We wrangled and argued till it was past time for him to start on his
expedition. I finally declared that, unless he fetched a scourge and a
branding-iron, I would, at daybreak, walk back to my villa and give myself
up to the authorities. At that he consented.

I went to sleep soon after he was gone and never woke till daylight.

I woke from a troubled sleep, haunted by nightmare dreams, woke aware of a
general discomfort, misery and horror, and of acute pain in my wounds. I
seemed to have a good appetite and ate with relish; but, hardly had I
ceased eating, when I appeared definitely feverish and the pain in my foot
became unbearable.

I told Agathemer how I felt and he examined my wounds. All three were
puffy, red, even purplish, and with pus at the edges. It was then and has
always been since a puzzle to both of us why wounds, seemingly healing
naturally when unwashed and undressed, should inflame and fester after
careful washing and dressing.

My fever was not high, but enough to make me fretful and irritable. The
day was very hot and still. I made Agathemer show me what spoil he had
brought and at once ordered him to light the charcoal brazier, heat the
iron and brand me. He demurred.

"If you feel feverish," he said, "the pain of the branding will double
your fever and, if you have three inflamed wounds, the brand will fester
to a certainty. You'll probably die of it, if I brand you."

"As well die one way as another," I said. "If we stay here we are certain
to be discovered sooner or later. Our only hope is to get away as soon as
may be. That cannot be until my back and both brands heal enough for us to
tramp northward. Your back is healed, so your brand will heal promptly. I
have to get over these wounds and the branding and scourging too. We must
be quick."

He argued, but I was half delirious and wholly unreasonable. I again
threatened to go straight to the villa and give myself up unless I had my
way.

Agathemer, distraught and aghast, yielded. I argued that in the early
haze, the little trifle of smoke from the charcoal could not attract
notice. He complied. He had trouble getting a light from his flint and
steel, but he succeeded, and, when the charcoal caught, set the little
brazier close to our nook and fanned it with a leafy bough to disperse the
smoke. When no further trace of smoke appeared and the charcoal glowed
evenly, he put the iron to heat.

When it was hot enough he suggested, again, that we put off branding me
till next day, and that he brand only himself. I insisted on his branding
me and branding me first.

To my amazement, when he had bared my shoulder, set me in position, and
snatched the iron from the brazier, I shrank back with a sort of weak
scream.

Agathemer instantly replaced the iron in the brazier and turned, staring
at me in silence.

Instantly I had a revulsion of resolution, of obstinacy, of delirious
rage. I reviled him. I commanded, I threatened.

Coolly he bared his left shoulder, knelt by the brazier and made as if to
brand himself.

"You can't do it," I protested, "you'll scar yourself to no purpose and
anyone will know the mark is not a brand. Fetch the iron here and hand it
to me."

He did, deftly. Without a wince or squeak he, kneeling and leaning, held
his shoulder to the white-hot iron. I could not have done better if I had
been well and standing, instead of delirious and sitting, wrapped in a
quilt, in a bed of dried leaves. I set the iron fair on the muscle of his
shoulder, held it there just the brief instant required for branding
without injury and snatched it away without any drag sideways.

After witnessing the stoical heroism of my slave I could not but insist on
his branding me and was exalted to the point of nerve-tension at which I
bit in my half-uttered scream as the heat seared my flesh. Agathemer
dressed each brand with an oil-soaked rag and we composed ourselves to
hide until dark.




CHAPTER XII

SUCCOUR


As on the days before, no one passed us and, indeed, as far as I could
judge, no living thing came near us, except a hare or two. We kept close
under our heap of leaves, inside our niche of rock. But this time I did
not snuggle inside my cloak and quilt; I cast off, first the quilt, then
the cloak, and lay in my tunic only, panting and gasping. For it was a
very hot, still day, and my fever increased, increased so much, in fact,
that I could stomach but little food at dusk and took but little interest
in anything; in my condition, in Agathemer's brand, in his departure.

His return, late at night, was to me only one incident of a sort of
continuous nightmare: I was half asleep, wholly delirious and every
impression was as the half-delusion of a half-waking dream. I was barely
half-conscious, yet I had sense enough to lie still, except for writhing
and turning over, and to restrain myself from singing or screaming.

At dawn I ate even less than at dusk, but I did eat something. Eating
roused me enough for me to insist on Agathemer's stripping me and
scourging me. He felt my forehead, my wrists and my feet, and shook his
head.

"You have a terrific fever," he said, "and four festering wounds, for the
brand-mark is festering already; you are in danger of death anyhow as it
is; you will never recover from a scourging."

I, with all a delirious man's unreasoning, insisted and again threatened
to give myself up.

The sun was about two hours high, gilding the treetops and sending shafts
of golden light through the still wet foliage. One such shaft of sunshine
shot between the two halves of the great rock that sheltered us and fell
on the table-topped fragment of stone, like a nearly buried altar, which
lay midway of them.

Writhing and groaning I slipped out of my quilt, cloak and tunic, and,
groaning, I crawled to the flat-topped stone. Face down on it I lay, my
chest against it, my knees on the ground, my arms outstretched, my fingers
gripping the far edge of the altar-stone.

So placed I bade Agathemer lay on with the scourge.

"Flay me!" I ordered. "I should be torn raw from neck to hips. The worse I
am scored and ripped the more protection the scars will be. Lay on
furiously. If I faint, finish the job before you revive me."

He began lashing me, but hesitatingly; I reviled him for a coward; but the
pain, even of the first strokes, was too much for me. I could feel the
sweat on my forehead, my finger nails dug into the sides of the stone, its
sharp edge cut into the soft inside of my clutching fingers, I bit my
tongue to keep from shrieking, yet my voice, as I taunted Agathemer and
railed at him, rose to a sort of scream.

He laid on more fiercely. After a dozen blows or more a harder blow made
me groan. At that instant I was aware of a shadow above me, of a human
figure rushing past me, and the blows ceased.

I let go my clutch on the rock and tried to stand up. I did succeed in
kneeling up, supported by my hand on the altar stone. So half erect I
looked round.

Agathemer lay under the intruder, who had him by the throat with both
hands. Partly by sight, even from behind him, partly by the objurgation
which he panted out, I recognized Chryseros Philargyrus and realized that
he thought that Agathemer had been torturing me in revenge for his
flogging at Nemestronia's.

I instantly forgot my plight and my natural instincts asserted themselves.
As if I had been then what I had been ten days before, I ordered Chryseros
to loose Agathemer and he obeyed me, as if I had been what I felt myself,
his master.

He and Agathemer stood up and looked at me and each other: I must have
made a laughable spectacle, swaying as I knelt, my hands on the rock, my
hair and beard mere clipped stubble, and I naked, with my back bleeding
and both shoulders and one hip inflamed, purple-red and puffy. Certainly
both Chryseros and Agathemer appeared comical to me, even in my pain and
misery and weakness and through the enveloping horror of my fever.
Agathemer, his hair and beard a worse stubble than mine, was gasping and
ruefully rubbing his throat, making a ridiculous figure in his brown
tunic, patched with patches of red, yellow and blue, all sewed on with
white thread. Chryseros was panting, and his bald head shone in the sun.
He had cast off his cloak as he rushed at Agathemer and stood only in his
rusty brown tunic, himself as dry and lean as a dead limb of a tree.

Although he had obeyed instantly when I ordered him to loose Agathemer,
yet, perhaps from some vagary of my fever, I stared at Chryseros without
any other feeling than that he had been for most of his life the tenant of
our family enemy. As I looked at him I felt utterly lost, as if there was
now no hope for me, as if Chryseros would certainly betray me to the
authorities. I felt utterly despairing and totally reckless. This mood,
oddly enough, urged me to do the very best thing I could have done.

Either from right instinct or delirious folly, I informed Chryseros fully
of our purposes, doings and plans. He apologized to Agathemer for his
assault on him, affirmed his complete loyalty to me and promised all
possible assistance and perfect secrecy. He examined me and said:

"I'll have your wounds clean, your back dried up, every inch of you
healing properly and your fever cooled before morning. Here, Agathemer,
help get him abed."

They washed my back and laid me, naked as I was, on the quilt laid over
the bed of leaves, then they covered me with the other quilt.

"You two keep close till I come back," Chryseros advised. "Someone else
might use this path. I'll be back soon and I'll arrange to excite no
suspicion."

When he returned he had me out on the flat-topped stone, washed my back
and wounds, and then bathed them with some lotion which, when first
applied, felt cooling and soothing, but almost at once burnt into me till
every part of my back, my hip and both my shoulders smarted worse than had
the one shoulder as the brand seared it: at least that was how I felt. I
writhed and groaned.

"Keep still!" Chryseros admonished me. "Keep quiet! This is doing you
good."

And he chafed my back, inundating it with his fiery liniment till I was on
the verge of fainting from mere pain. Half fainting I was as the two
raised me to my feet and put the tunic on me, as they helped me back to my
bed in the little grotto. When I was recumbent Chryseros made me drink a
nauseous, black, bitter liquid and then lie flat.

"Keep there till morning," he said, "and fast. Food can do you no good
while you have such a fever and fasting can do you no harm."

Actually I was asleep before I knew it and slept all day and all night,
not waking until Agathemer, when Chryseros ordered it, roused me. They
pressed on me a quart bowl of milk warm from the cow, and I drank most of
it. I felt much better and Chryseros pronounced me free from fever and
after he had inspected my back and wounds and again inundated them with
his fiery lotion, declared all inflammation had vanished and that I was
healing up properly. He enjoined Agathemer to let me have no food but
milk, said he would bring more after sunset, and told us to keep close in
the niche. I slept all day long, and after a second draught of milk at
dusk, all night till the sun was well up.

I woke feeling stiff and sore, uncomfortable on my back, hip and
shoulders, but with no positive pain anywhere: also I felt like my usual
self. And I may say here, parenthetically, that I never had another day's
illness through all the vicissitudes of my flight, hiding, adventures and
misfortunes.

Chryseros brought me milk; excellent wheat bread; a smooth and appetizing
veal-stew, with beans and lentils in it and seasoned with spices; cheese
newly made from fresh curds, and luscious plums. He let me eat my fill and
drink all the milk I wanted. But he would not let me taste the wine of
which Agathemer drank moderately.

"If you feel sleepy," said Chryseros, "roll over, cover yourself and go to
sleep; we can talk tomorrow."

"I do not feel sleepy," I declared, "and I feel very much like asking
questions."

"Then we'll talk at once," he said, "we'll take all the time needed for
your recovery; but once you are recovered, we'll waste no time in getting
you out of Sabinum."

The morning was fair and warm, with a light breeze. I was on my bed of
leaves inside my nook of rock. Agathemer was squatted by my head, his back
against that edge of the niche; by my feet, leaning against the opposite
edge of the niche, facing Agathemer, and therefore where I could best see
and hear him sat Chryseros.

He began by telling me that I must remain where I was until he judged me
fit to travel, even if I remained ten days more; but that he thought I
might be able to start to-morrow night and would make his preparations
accordingly. His first idea, he said, had been to set off on horseback for
Spolitum, near, which he had a sister married to a prosperous farmer, to
whom he had paid visits at intervals of about five years. He had thought
that it would be easy and safe to take me and Agathemer with him on foot,
disguised as slaves. This idea, however, Agathemer had antagonized,
pointing out that any convoy from my estate would be severely scrutinized
and every man examined and searched; that there was no chance of our
escaping by such a plan.

At this point of his discourse he told me that the Praetorians had already
departed from Villa Andivia leaving in charge Gratillus, a treasury
officer of the confiscation department, a man whom I knew too well as also
a member of the secret service, an articled Imperial spy and an active
professional informer, moreover a man who had always hated my uncle, and
who had hated me from my boyhood.

According to Chryseros, Gratillus had made no great effort to find me,
since, in fact, neither he nor anyone connected with the government had
had any suspicion that I had returned home. He had merely made a
perfunctory investigation to assure himself, as he thought, that I had not
so returned. He had examined all the tenantry and slaves, had asked
questions, but had tortured no one and had been quite satisfied with the
answers he had received. Oddly enough, while he had closely questioned
himself and my other eight tenants as to the date of my departure for Rome
and as to whether they had seen me since they last saw me in Rome, and
while he had questioned Uturia and Ofatulena as to whether they had seen
me since I set off for Rome, he had somehow omitted or forgotten to ask
Ofatulenus the same questions, so that he had been able to answer
truthfully the only questions asked of him. Agathemer, I found, had told
Chryseros that only he and Ofatulenus had seen me between my return and
escape.

Gratillus had especially questioned the wives of my eight tenants, and as
Chryseros was a widower, his widowed daughter, who lived with him. Each of
these he had summoned before him separately and had interrogated alone and
at length. This was like Gratillus.

He had made but one arrest, and this dumbfounded me. Ducconius Furfur had
been interrogated, like all my neighbors, but, while the rest had been
dismissed after answering what questions were put to them, Furfur, with
two servants, had accompanied to Rome the Praetorians when they went away.

The more I reflected on this the stranger it seemed.

Neither Chryseros nor Agathemer had any doubt that a close watch was being
quietly kept to make sure that I could not now return to Villa Andivia
without being caught; nor yet leave it if I did return or had returned.

As a result of his discussion with Agathemer they had agreed that we were
to leave by night and on foot, as we had originally intended. But he had
argued that, while it was perfectly sensible for us to plan to pass
ourselves off as runaway slaves if arrested and questioned, there was no
sense whatever in doing anything to appear like runaway slaves unless we
were actually arrested and questioned. Agathemer had admitted this, but
had pointed out that, while we had no hope of any assistance whatever, and
were planning to escape by our own unaided efforts, there was no
possibility of our trying to appear anything else than runaway slaves, as
he could easily steal slaves' cloaks and tunics from my spare stores, but
had no hope of getting his hands on any other garments. He had joyfully
accepted the ideas and suggestions which Chryseros put forward, as well as
his proffers of assistance.

Chryseros directed that the two copper cylinders and most of the spoils of
Agathemer's pilferings should be left in our little grotto, hidden under
the dead leaves. He would then smuggle them away and dispose of them. He
would supply us with rusty brown tunics and cloaks of undyed mixed wool,
such as were worn by poor or economical farmers throughout Sabinum. Also
he would supply us with hats better than those Agathemer had fetched;
belts; and travelling wallets, neither too big nor too small, neither too
new nor too worn, and each with a shoulder-strap for easy carriage; good,
heavy shoes, two pair of them for each of us, so that we might carry a
spare pair in each wallet. In the wallets also we were to hide the hunting
knives Agathemer had taken from my uncle's collection; which knives,
blades, handles and sheaths Chryseros highly approved.

At sight of the flageolet he grinned, the only smile I saw on his face
while he was helping us in our hiding and out of it. Agathemer,
obstinately, insisted on taking that flageolet. And Chryseros grudgingly
admitted that it might prove a really valuable possession, perhaps. We
took, of course, our two little flint and steel cases.

Chryseros said we ought to eat all we could manage to swallow up to the
moment of our departure. He would pack our wallets with food which could
be made to last four or five days and would be plenty for two days. Most
important of all he would supply us with money, half copper and half
silver, as much as our wallets could properly hold, so as not to make us
appear thieves, if we were suspected and haled before a magistrate. With
money we could travel openly and by day after we were well out of Sabinum.

We planned to make our way eastward, inclining very little to the north,
towards Fisternae. The crossing of the Tolenus and Himella should give us
no trouble whatever. We would pass south of Cliternia and north of
Fisternae. Chryseros questioned Agathemer closely as to his knowledge of
the byroads, and applauded him highly, only on a few points correcting him
or amplifying what he knew. North of Fisternae we could gain the mountains
and work northwards.

The most dangerous part of our proposed route, the critical point of our
escape, would be the crossing of the Avens and the Salarian Highway, which
we must effect somewhere near Forum Decii, between Interocrium and
Falacrinum. Once in the mountains we should be able easily to continue on
northwards into Umbria.

Chryseros suggested that, once in Umbria, we could pass ourselves off as
buyers of cattle, goats and mules, all of which were bred on the mountain
farms and regularly bought up by itinerant dealers who drove them or had
them driven to Rome. The Umbrian mountains had no such numbers of these
animals as Sabinum produced and their quality was far inferior, so that
the dealers were always men of small means, driving close bargains.

All this sounded very promising and, about half way between sunrise and
noon, he left us to hide for the rest of the day. I slept well and woke
feeling almost myself, with merely trifling discomfort from my fast
healing wounds.

When Chryseros returned in the dusk, I ate ravenously. He brought us good,
coarse tunics and cloaks, also hats, shoes, and belts; and for each of us,
a small leather case containing two good needles and a little hank of
strong linen thread. We talked in subdued tones, as before, and kept it up
until long after dark.

Next morning I woke full of hope and eager to be off. Chryseros brought
our wallets and we packed them with everything they were to hold except
most of the food. We had a long wrangle over the money, as Chryseros
wanted to force on us more silver than I thought it safe to carry.

That night, after a generous meal and a long final talk with Chryseros, we
set off to sneak our way into the Aemilian Estate and from there eastward.
Before we set off Chryseros insisted on hanging round each of our necks,
by the usual leathern thong, one of those tiny, flat leathern pouches, in
which slaves were accustomed to wear protective amulets. He declared that
these contained talismans of great potency and of inestimable value to us
in our flight, as in any risk or venture. At the moment of parting, to my
amazement, he burst into tears, threw his arms around me, held me close
and clung to me sobbing, and kissing me as if I had been his own son. As
we moved off I could still hear his sobs.

We had excellent luck. Hiding by day and threading devious paths by night
we reached and passed the Avens and the Salarian Highway without any
encounter with any human being; and indeed without near proximity to any.
Our daytime hiding-places all turned out to have been well chosen and no
one approached us in any one of them. The moon, which was in her first
quarter on the night of our setting out, helped us nightly. There was no
rain and only some moderate cloudiness, enough to be helpful at the time
of the full moon, when there was enough light all night for us to see to
travel at a good rate of speed and without any error at forks in the
paths; and yet not enough light to make us conspicuous to any who might be
abroad late at night.

Once beyond the Nar and almost at the borders of Umbria, we grew bolder,
travelled by day, bought food as we needed it, put up at inns and acted
the character we had assumed, of Sabines intent on stock-buying in the
Umbrian mountains. No one appeared to suspect us and we had no adventures.

But, inevitably, once we had escaped, we did not so much think of
immediate danger as of permanent safety. Chryseros had confirmed our
instinctive opinion that, as Sabines, we should be much less likely to
arouse suspicion in Umbria and the Po Valley than in Samnium, Lucania or
Bruttium. We had never thought of escape southward; northward we had meant
to work our way, from the instant of conceiving the idea of escaping. But
we had no settled, coherent plan as to how to achieve safety and keep
alive. We could not hide in the mountains indefinitely.

We both agreed that we could hide best in a large city. Marseilles might
have been a perfect hiding-place could we have reached it, full as it
always was of riff-raff from all the shores of the Mediterranean and from
all parts of Italy. But Marseilles we could reach only by the Aurelian
Highway, through Genoa along the coast, and the Aurelian Highway was
certain to be sown with spies and likely enough might be travelled upon by
officials who had known me from childhood and would probably know me
through any disguise.

Aquileia, on the other hand, was far more populous than Marseilles, even
more a congeries of rabble from all shores and districts, even more easy-
going. In Aquileia we should be able to earn a comfortable living by not
too onerous activities and to be wholly unsuspected. Towards Aquileia we
decided to try to make our way. The roads, being less travelled, would be
less spied-on and we should meet officials less likely to recognize me.

But, if we were to reach Aquileia, we must husband our silver. Agathemer's
idea was that, from where we reached the borders of Umbria, somewhere
between Trebia and Nursia, we should keep as near as possible to the chine
of the mountain-chain, using the roads, paths, tracks or trails highest up
the slope of the mountains; avoiding being seen as much as possible, and,
if we were seen, claiming to have lost our way through misunderstanding
the directions given us by the last natives we had met. He proposed to
steal food for us, instead of buying it, and expounded his ideas,
maintaining that it would be easy and not dangerous.

We tried his plan and succeeded well with it. So wild and untravelled were
the districts which we traversed that, nearly half the time, we were
welcomed at farmsteads, (to which welcome Agathemer's flageolet-playing
greatly assisted us), invited to spend the night and had lavished upon our
entertainment all their rustic abundance, so that we visibly grew fat.
When such luck did not befall us we had no trouble in helping ourselves to
supplies, for, far up the mountains, most habitations were shacks tenanted
only in summer and only by lads acting as goat-herds or herdsmen, who
spent the day abroad with their charges, so that we could readily enter
their deserted cabins and take what we pleased; especially as, if a dog
had been left to guard the hut, I could always master him so that he
greeted me fawning and stood wagging his tail as we made off.

Except these not very risky raids for provender and such encounters as
called for more than usually ingenious lying from Agathemer, we had no
adventures.

But we realized from day to day and more and more insistently, that we
were progressing slowly, far slower than we had anticipated. It was plain
that we could not hope to reach Aquileia before winter set in. It was
manifest that it would be unsafe to attempt to winter anywhere in the Po
valley between the mountains and Aquileia. At Ravenna, Bononia or Padua we
should be noticed, investigated and perhaps recognized: anywhere in the
open country, at any village or farm, we should, even more certainly
excite suspicion. We must winter in the mountains. But how or where?

The question was solved for us by our first considerable adventure. I
never knew the precise locality. We had, in traversing the mountains
trails, avoided any semblance of ignorance of our general locality and had
sedulously refrained from asking any questions except as to our way to
some nearby objective, generally imaginary. All I know is that we were
somewhere on the northeastern slope of the long chain of mountains beyond
Iguvium and Tifernum perhaps near the headwaters of the Sena. On the
morning of our adventure we were on a long spur of the main range, so that
we were headed not northwest but northeast. The weather was still fine and
warm, but autumn was not far off. We hadn't seen a habitation since that
at which we had passed the night, and we had made about three leagues
since we left it, following what was at first a good mountain road, but
which grew worse and worse till it became a mere trail.




CHAPTER XIII

THE LONELY HUT


Some time before noon we were threading a barely visible track not far
below the crest of the spur, a track bordered and overshadowed by
chestnuts and beeches, but chestnuts and beeches intermingled with not a
few pines and firs, when, out of the bushes on our left hand, from the up
slope above us, appeared a large mouse-colored Molossian dog, very lean
and starved looking. I first saw his big, square-jowled, short-muzzled
head peering out between some low cornel bushes, his brown eyes regarding
me questioningly.

He fawned on me, of course, and I made friends with him, fondled him,
pulled his ears and played with him a while.

Agathemer tartly enquired whether we really had time to waste on
skylarking with strange dogs. I laughed, picked up my wallet, and started
to follow him as he swung round and strode on, ordering the dog to go back
home, a command which, from me, almost always won instant compliance and
disembarrassed me of any casual roadside friends.

But the dog did not obey. He pawed at me, whined, and caught my cloak in
his teeth, tugging at it and whining. I could not induce him to let go,
could not shake him off, and was much puzzled. Agathemer, impatient and
irritated, halted again and urged our need of haste.

After exhausting every wile by which I had been accustomed to rid myself
of too fond animals, I began to realize that the dog did not want to
follow us, did not want us to remain where we were and go on playing with
him, but, as plainly as if he spoke Latin, he was begging us to accompany
him somewhere.

I said to Agathemer:

"I'm going with this dog; come along."

He remonstrated.

I declared that I had an intuition that to follow the dog was the right
thing to do. Agathemer, contemptuous and reluctant, yielded. The dog led
us along an all but undistinguishable track through densely growing trees,
up steep slopes and out into a flattish glade or clearing at the brow of
the slope, overhung by merely a few hundred feet of wooded mountain side
and bare cliffs to the crest. The clearing was clothed in soft, late,
second-growth grass, and had plainly been mown at haying time and pastured
on since. In it we found some well-built, well-thatched farm-buildings: a
sheepfold, a goatpen, a cowshed, a strongly built structure like a granary
or store-house, another like a repository for wine-jars and oil-jars;
hovels such as all mountain farms have for slave-quarters and a house or
cabin little better than a hut, mud-walled, like the other buildings, but
new thatched. It was nearly square and had no ridge-pole, the four slopes
of the roof running together, at the top, yet not into a point, but as if
there were a smoke-vent: in fact I thought I saw a suggestion of smoke
rising from the peak of the roof.

To this hut the dog led us. The heavy door of weathered, rough-hewn oak
was shut, but, when I pushed it, proved to be unfastened. I found myself
looking into a largish room, roofed with rough rafters from which hung
what might have been hams, flitches and cheeses. It was mud-walled and had
a floor of beaten earth, in which was a sand-pit, nearly full of ashes and
with a small fire smouldering in the middle of it. Opposite me was a rough
plank partition with two doors in it, both open. Against the partition,
between the doors, hung bronze lamps, iron pots and pottery jars. The room
was dim, lighted only from the door, in which I stood, and from the narrow
smoke-vent overhead.

By the fire, on their hands and knees, and apparently poking at it, each
with a bit of wood, or about to lay the bits of wood on it, were two
little girls, shock-headed, barefoot and bare-legged, clad only in coarse
tunics of rusty dark wool. I am not accurate as to children's ages: I took
these girls for seven and five; but they may have been six and four or
eight and six. At sight of us they scrambled to their feet and fled
through one of the doors, one shrieking, the other screaming:

"Mamma! Mamma! Strange men! Strange men!"

In her panic she did not attempt to shut the door behind her and bolt it,
both of which, as I afterwards discovered, she might have done.

No other voices came to our ears and I followed the children into the rear
room in which they had taken refuge. It was totally dark, except for what
light found its way through its door, and was cramped and small and half
filled by a Gallic bed. I had never seen a Gallic bed before. Such a bed
is made like the body of a travelling-carriage or travelling litter,
entirely encased in panelling, topped off with a sort of flat roof of
panelling, and with sliding panels above the level of the cording, so that
the occupants can shut themselves in completely; a structure which looks
to a novice like a device for smothering its occupants, but which is a
welcome retreat and shelter on cold, windy, winter nights, as I have
learned by later experience. As this was my first sight of one I was
amazed at it.

Usually, as I learned later, such a bedstead is piled up with feather-
beds, so that the occupant is much above the level of the top edge of the
lower front on which the panels slide. But this bed was poorly provided
with mattresses and I had to stare down into it to descry the children's
mother, who lay like a corpse in a coffin, but half buried in bedding and
quilts, only her face visible. She was certainly alive, for her breathing
was loud and stertorous; but she was, quite certainly, unconscious.
Between the shrieking children, who clung to the frame of the bed, I spoke
to her and assured her that we were friends. She gave no sign of
understanding me, of hearing me, of knowing of my presence; but my
repeated assurances quieted the elder girl, who not only ceased screaming
but endeavored to calm her little sister.

Seeing her so sensible, I questioned the child. All I could learn from her
was that her father had been away nearly ten days, her mother ill for five
and insensible for three and their four slaves had run away the day
before, taking everything they chose to carry off. I then examined the
other room which had a similar bed in it, and in which, the child told me,
she and her sister slept. She declared that she did not know her mother's
name, that her father never called her anything but "mother"; she also
declared that she did not know her father's name, her mother, always
calling him "father," as she and her sister did. Her name was Prima and
her sister's Secunda.

As I could not rouse the woman and learned that the slaves had been gone
more than a full day, Agathemer and I went to save the bellowing and
bleating stock. We found in the shed two fine young cows with udders
appallingly distended. But our attention was momentarily distracted from
them by the sight of eight full-sized bronze pails, finer than those at
any public well in Reate or Consentia, which hung on pegs by the door,
four on each side of it. They were flat-bottomed, bulged, but narrowed at
the rim so that no water would splash out in carrying. The rims were
ornamented with chased or cast patterns, scallops, leaves, egg and dart
and wall of Troy: four patterns, showing that they were pairs. All had
heavy double handles. We looked for carrying-yokes, but could see none.
Such pails, which would be the treasures of any village and the pride of
most towns, amazed us in this fastness. Glancing at the pails took us less
time than it does to tell of it. The cows needed us sorely and we each
picked up one of the suitable earthenware jars which stood inverted just
inside the shed door and milked them at once. Agathemer said he thought we
were in time to forestall any serious and permanent harm to them. But
their udders were frightfully swelled and blood came with the milk from
one teat of the cow I attended to.

The sheep were in a worse state than the cows. Not a lamb was visible;
besides the ewes there was only a two-year-old ram penned by himself in a
corner of the fold. There were eight fine young ewes, in full milk. As
with one cow, so among these ewes, four gave bloody milk from one teat
each, and we milked that onto the earth. We found plenty of empty
earthenware crocks, clean, and turned upside down, in which to save the
good milk.

The he-goat, a noble young specimen, was penned by himself, like the ram.
There were nineteen she-goats, with not a kid anywhere, yet all in full
milk and far worse off than the ewes. All but two gave bloody milk and
three gave no clean milk. These three I judged might die, but Agathemer
vowed he could save them.

When we had finished milking we searched about for water. Towards the
northeast the clearing narrowed and here we came upon a tiny rill
trickling through a fringe of sedge. It came from a clear and abundant
spring in a cleft of rock against the sharp up slope which rose there
under the pines. At the lower edge of that part of the clearing, near the
margin of the more nearly level ground, just before it plunged over the
rim of the flat, it was dammed into a drinking pool for the stock. We did
not dare let them out to drink and so laboriously carried water, I from
the spring and Agathemer from the pond, using each a pair of the bronze
pails, pouring the water into the troughs made of hollow logs, which were
set, one to each, in the shed, pen and fold. We kept this up till every
goat and ewe had had her fill, and then watered the he-goat and ram. The
cows, of course, we had watered first. After the watering we gave each cow
a feed of mixed barley and millet and then filled with hay all the mangers
and racks.

When we had concluded this exhausting toil we filled the water-jar which
stood in one corner of the cabin and then carried some milk into the
house, and offered Prima and Secunda whichever they preferred. They chose
ewe's milk and drank their fill. Prima was much impressed by the dog's
confidence in me and seemed to give me hers. She said the dog's name was
Hylactor. I tried to make the mother drink some cow's milk, but she
swallowed only a few drops which I forced through her teeth by the help of
a small horn spoon which I found on the floor of the outer room.

Agathemer roused the fire and piled more wood on it. There were no less
than seven tripods lying about the floor of the cabin, but all roughly
made and of the squat, short-legged pattern which holds a pot barely clear
of a low bed of coals; not one was fit to hold a cauldron over a newly
made deep fire of half-caught wood.

On the tallest of them, or rather on that least squatty, Agathemer set a
small pot, which he filled with fresh water. When he had this where it
seemed likely to boil and certain to heat, he ferretted about for
supplies. He found a brick oven with about half a baking of bread in it;
medium-sized loaves of coarse wheat bread. Two forked sticks stood in one
corner of the cabin and with one he lifted from its peg in the rafters a
partly used flitch of good coarse bacon. There was a jar more than half
full of olive oil by the sticks in the same corner of the cabin. In a
small pot set in the ashes Agathemer stewed some of the onions he lifted
down from the rafters. In the other corner of the cabin was an amphora
nearly full of harsh, sour wine. We made a full meal of bread, onions,
bacon, olives and some raisins, drinking our fill of the wine. The little
girls ate heartily with us, now convinced that we were friends and
accepting us as such. They seemed to some extent habituated to their
mother's condition of helplessness and insensibility.

As soon as we had fed we inspected the place. The glade or clearing was
enclosed all around by the tall trees of a thick primitive forest. Towards
the up slope and the cliffs below the crest of the mountain the trees were
all pines, firs or such-like dark and somber evergreens. There were a few
of these also on the lower slopes, but there, as along all that rim of the
clearing, the forest was mostly of oak, beech, chestnut and other cheerful
trees. Their tops towered far above the verge of the slope and screened
the clearing all round. Nowhere could we catch sight of any sign of a
town, village or farmstead, though there were three several rifts in the
forest through which we could see far into the valleys to the eastward.
The cliff above the clearing ran nearly from southwest to northeast, so
that the place was well situated towards the sun.

The cow-shed was divided by a partition and half of it had been used for
stabling mules. Agathemer judged that no mule had been in it for about ten
days. We inferred that the children's father had taken the mules with him
when he departed. Over the cow-shed was a loft, well stored with good hay,
as were the smaller lofts over the sheds which formed one side of the
sheepfold and goat-pen. The hay was not mountain hay, but distinctly
meadow hay, such as is mown in valleys along streams. It was all in
bundles, such bundles as are carried on mule-back, two to a mule. This was
queer; even queerer the absence of any fowls or pigeons, or of any sign
that any had ever been about the place. An Umbrian mountain farm without
pigeons was unthinkable.

In the granary we found an amazingly large store of excellent barley, but
only two jars of wheat, and that not very good, and neither jar entirely
full. On the floor were loose piles of turnips, beets and of dried pods of
coarse beans. There were jars of chick-peas, cow-peas, lentils, beans and
millet, more millet than wheat. From the rafters hung dried bean-bushes,
with the pods on; long strings of onions, dried herbs, marjoram, thyme,
sage, bay-leaves and other such seasonings, dried peppers, strung like the
onions, and bunches of big sweet raisins. Also many rush-mats of dried
figs, the biggest and best of figs, some of them indubitably Caunean figs.
On the floor, in heaps, were some hard-headed cabbages, only one or two
spoiled. It was a very ample store and we marvelled at it and wondered
whence it all came and how it came where it was.

The other store-house amazed us. It was, as we had conjectured, full of
great jars; jars of wine, of olive oil, of pickled olives, of pickled
fish, of pickled pork, of vinegar, of plums in vinegar, and smaller jars
of honey, sauces and prepared relishes. The rafters were set full of
cornel-wood pegs till they looked like weavers-combs. From the pegs hung
hams, flitches, strings of smoked sausage, cheeses of all sizes, smoked so
heavily that they appeared mere lumps of soot, and bags of a shape
unfamiliar to both of us. Agathemer knocked one down and opened it. It was
full of tight packed fish, salted, dried and smoked, a fish of a kind
unknown to us.

There was, along the upper edge of the clearing, under the boughs of the
pine trees, a huge pile of trimmed logs of oak, chestnut, pine and fir,
with a scarcely smaller heap of cut lengths of boughs and branches. Under
a lean-to shed was a small store of cut fire-wood. In a corner of the same
shed were four big cornel-wood mauls and eleven good iron wedges, not one
of them bearing any sign of ever having been used, but appearing as if
fresh from the maker's hands. By the woodpile were four even heavier
mauls, showing plenty of marks of hard usage and near them or about the
woodpile we found eight rusty wedges.

We could find no axe, hatchet or any other such tool anywhere about the
place. The logs and six-foot lengths of boughs afforded a lavish supply of
fuel for two long winters; the cut fire-wood could not be made to keep the
fire going ten days.

The slave-quarters, as I said, were mere hovels, but they were provided
with bedding, quilts, and stores of clothing by no means such as are
generally used for slaves. Slaves' quilts are mostly old and worn, made of
patches of woollen or linen cloth all but worn out by previous use; and
then, when torn, patched with a patch on a patch and a patch on that.
These quilts were the best of their kind, such as ladies of leisure make
for their own amusement, of squares and triangles of woolen stuff unworn
and unsoiled. The mattresses were stuffed with dried grass or sedge,
craftily packed to make a soft bed for any sleeper. The pillows were of
lambs' wool, as good as the best pillows. And, in a big chest in each
hovel, were good, new, clean tunics, cloaks, rain-cloaks, and with them
sandals, shoes, hats, rain-hats and all sorts of clothing, not as if for
slaves, but as if for middle-class farmers, prosperous and self-indulgent.

We were dumbfounded at such abundance in such a place.

By each bed in the hut was a chest. These we opened and found in both
women's clothing; tunics, robes, cloaks and rolls of linen and fine woolen
stuffs.

The woman, although moaning and stirring in her bed, gave no more signs of
life than when we first saw her. Agathemer said, speaking Greek so the
children would not understand:

"We must try to save this woman's life. You manage to get the children to
follow you outside and I'll lift her out of the bed, and wash her, put a
clean tunic on her, put clean bedding in the bed and put her back in it; I
can do all that handily. She is so ill she will never know."

We went out in the slave-hovels and chose what bedding seemed suitable and
carried it into the hut. Agathemer had put more fuel on the fire and set a
big pot of water on the tripod. We put the bedding in a corner of the hut
and selected from the contents of the chests a tunic and some rough
towels, of which there were some in each chest.

I was not hopeful of being able to wheedle the children; but my first
attempt was a complete success. I suggested to Prima that she tell me the
names of the sheep and goats and she at once became absorbed in
instructing me. Each had a name, she was certain; but, I found, very
uncertain as to which name belonged to which and not very sure of some of
the names. Her hesitations and efforts to remember took up so much time
that we were still at the goat-pen, Secunda with one hand clinging
confidingly to mine, when Agathemer called to me from the door of the hut.

He told me in Greek that he had done all he could for the woman, had
effaced all traces of his activities and had put the soiled bedding out in
the late sunshine to dry and air. We strolled about the clearing,
remarking again that it seemed out of sight from any possible inhabited or
travelled viewpoint. Agathemer fetched a rough ladder he had seen in the
cow-shed, set it against the hut, which was highest on the slope, and
climbed to the top of its roof. From there, he said, he could descry
nothing in any direction which looked like a town, village, farmstead or
bit of highway. The place was well hidden, by careful calculation, for
this could not have come about by accident.

We peered into each of the buildings and poked about in them, hoping to
find an axe or hatchet, and marvelling that a place so liberally, so
lavishly, so amazingly oversupplied with hams, flitches, sausages and
other such food should show nowhere any trace of the presence of hogs.
There was no hog-pen nor any place where one might have been, nor did any
part of the clearing show any signs indicating a former wallow, nor had
any portion of it been rooted up. It was very puzzling.

As we returned to the house, about an hour before sunset, we
simultaneously uttered, in Greek:

"Here we stay--"

"Go on," said I checking.

"Here we stay," he began again, "until the husband comes home, or, if he
does not return, until spring."

"That is my idea, also," I said, "and there is but one drawback."

"Pooh," said Agathemer, "if we do not find an axe somewhere hereabouts
I'll steal one from a farm if I have to spend two days and a night on the
quest."

We agreed that there was no question but that we must spend the night
where we were. The stock, after their long neglect and late milking, would
be best left unmilked and unwatered till morning. As we must not leave the
woman unwatched, we must sleep in the hut. We could bring in sedge
mattresses and quilts from the hovels and sleep on the earth floor by the
fire. When we had agreed on these points we forced some more milk on the
semi-unconscious woman, gave the stock more hay, ate an abundant meal of
bread, oil, sausages broiled over the fire on a spit, olives and raisins;
and, soon after sunset, composed ourselves to sleep by the well-covered
fire, leaving open the door into the woman's bedroom, but shutting the two
children into theirs after telling them by no means to stir until we
called them in the morning.

Hylactor curled up outside the cabin door, almost against it, after
Agathemer had convinced him that we would not let him sleep in the hut. We
slept unbrokenly till dawn woke us.

It was cold before sunrise so high up the mountains. My face felt cold
even inside the hut and by the smouldering fire. I was reluctant to roll
out of my quilts. But, what with Agathemer's urgings and my own
realization of what was required, I did my share of the milking, watering
and feeding of the stock and ate a hearty breakfast. For, as when hiding
in Furfur's woods, as when anywhere on our escape, since it was not
possible to eat as if at home and at ease, we ate our fill soon after dawn
and again before dark, but during the day we ate nothing. We had from
necessity already formed the habit of two meals a day, at sunrise and
sunset.

The woman seemed less violently ill than the day before. When we first saw
her she had been in the throes of a violent fever and it had lasted until
after Agathemer bathed her. From then on it seemed to abate, but, when I
last felt her forehead and hands before we lay down to sleep, she was
still feverish. When we first went to her in the morning she was
unconscious and as if in a stupor, but showed no signs of fever. She did
not struggle against feeding as on the previous day, but swallowed, a
spoonful at a time, as much milk as Agathemer thought good for her.

When we had done what seemed necessary Agathemer suggested that I remain
by the cabin while he investigated the woods round the clearing to make
sure how many roads or paths led out of it. He proposed to carry his
sheath-knife and the stout and tried staff which had helped him along the
mountain trails, as a similar one had helped me, and to take Hylactor with
him: to make a circuit about the clearing some ten yards or so inside the
forest and, if necessary a second circuit, further away from our glade.
These two circuits should make him sure how many tracks led from or to our
clearing. Then he would follow each track and acquaint himself with it,
and, if possible, learn where it led. I approved.

Before noon he reported that only three tracks approached our location;
that by which we had reached it up the slope of the mountain, and one
along the slope in each direction. About mid-afternoon he returned up the
track by which we had come, stating that the trail southwards, about a
league south of us, joined the road along which we had travelled till
Hylactor diverted us: he had made the circuit along the length of the
league or more of trail, back along the road by which we had travelled and
up the track by which Hylactor had led us; he had met no living thing,
save a hare or two, too fleet for Hylactor to catch; he had caught sight
of no town, village or farmstead, even afar. He had made sure that the
mules had left the clearing by the track he had followed out of it, so
that, probably, the children's father had gone south. Exploring the other
trail he had put off till the next day.

Next day he found that the other track joined the lower road only about
half a league to northeastwards. He turned back along the lower road and
returned by the uphill track, as he had done the day before to the south.
He met no one and saw no town, village or farmstead anywhere in sight, and
at some places he could see far to the eastward.

We discussed his proposal to go off alone, with a wallet of food and try
to steal an axe. Plainly he would have to go far. It would be easy enough
to sneak back to the farm where we had spent our last night before meeting
Hylactor, but we both felt bound by the obligation of our hospitable
entertainment there: though nameless fugitives we were still under the
spell of the standards of our former lives. We admitted to each other that
he might steal an axe from that farm and I condone the knavery and avail
myself of its proceeds; but we agreed that such baseness must be stooped
to only as a desperate last resort. He was to set off northwards next day.

That night the woman, who had been inert and manageable, in a half-stupor,
became violently delirious and for a time it took all the strength
Agathemer and I jointly possessed to hold her in bed. Prima and Secunda,
waked by her shrieks, were in a pitiable panic, Secunda merely dazed and
aghast, Prima begging us not to kill her mother, fancying we were
attacking her. We managed to convince the child that we were doing our
best and what was best for her mother and that her mother's ravings would
quiet and that she might regain her reason and health. I induced both
children to return to their bed and shut and bolted their door. Agathemer
and I, by turns, and twice again each helping the other, kept the poor
woman in her bed all night. At dawn she quieted and fell into a profound
stupor. But the vigil left me and Agathemer worn out. We attended to the
milking, feeding and watering of the stock and then I went to sleep in one
of the slave hovels, which were free from vermin, not the least amazing of
the many amazing features of our place of sojourn.

This outbreak of our insensible hostess made impossible the immediate
execution of Agathemer's project. He had to have adequate rest before he
could set off. After I had slept all the morning, he slept most of the
afternoon. During his nap I found, behind the water-jar in the hut, a
hatchet-head, with the handle broken off and what was left of it jammed in
the hole. It was small, but not very rusty or dull. Before Agathemer
wakened I had it well sharpened. We had found a mallet in the storehouse,
and, with this and a cornel-wood peg he whittled with his sheath-knife,
Agathemer drove out the broken bit of hatchet handle. He then fashioned
with his sheath-knife a good handle of tough, seasoned ash from a piece he
had found in one of the buildings. With this hatchet we could cut up small
boughs selected from the big woodpile, but it was too small to enable us
to cut logs into lengths or split lengths of logs.

Again, when Agathemer was planning for the next day his axe-stealing
expedition, the woman had a fit of raving. This lasted a night, a day and
a night and left both of us to the last degree weary and drowsy. Before we
had recuperated our firewood was almost used up. The situation looked
hopeless. It was well along into the Autumn, though we were now unsure of
what month we were in, so completely had we lost count of the days. Again
Agathemer projected an expedition for the next day, in the faint hope of
obtaining us an axe, and I feared he now aimed for our last harborage. At
dusk, as he hunted for small wood under the margin of the woodpile, he
found a good, big, double-edged axe-head. It was dull and very rusty, and
he had a vast deal of trouble getting out the fragment of broken handle
and shaping a new handle, in which he was greatly helped by a fairly good
draw-knife, which I had that very morning found hanging on a peg behind
the hay in the loft over the cow-shed. He had quite as much trouble in
fitting the handle into the axe-head and in sharpening both edges. But he
did all that before we composed ourselves to sleep. Besides those on the
partition we had found a score of fine bronze lamps and we had olive oil
enough for all uses for two winters.

Next morning we woke to find all our world buried under a foot of snow,
the pines laden with it, the boughs of the beeches, oaks and chestnuts
furred with it along their tops. It was a magic outlook, the like of which
neither of us had ever seen.

After that, all through the winter, our life was an unvarying routine of
milking, feeding and watering the stock, preparing and eating meals
limited only by our appetites, nursing the sick woman, and chopping
firewood. From the first streak of dawn till the last gleam of twilight
one or the other of us chopped the firewood. Neither of us was an adept at
handling an axe. But Agathemer, with his half Greek ancestry and his
wholly Greek versatility and adaptability, taught himself to be a good
axeman in ten days. I bungled and blundered away at it all winter.
Agathemer could cut a two-foot oak log into suitable lengths with a
minimum of effort, with clean, effective strokes of the ringing axe, the
cuts sharp and even; I could cut any log into lengths and enjoyed the
effort, but I sweated over it and laid half my strokes awry, so that the
ends of my lengths were notched and unsightly.

Also I broke five several axe-helves in the course of the winter. The
first time I broke a helve Agathemer had no substitute ready, and, what
was more, the fragment of the old helve was in so tight that he had to
burn it out in the fire and then retemper and resharpen our one precious
axe-head. His retempering and resharpening turned out all right, but he
said his success was accidental and he might ruin the axe if he tried
again. So he made two extra helves and had a dozen cornel-wood pegs ready
to drive out the bit of broken handle next time I broke it; as I did,
according to his laughing forecast.

The incessant labor of our days hardened both of us. Our muscles were like
steel rods. We slept on our mattresses by that ash-covered fire as I had
never slept at Villa Andivia or at my mansion in Rome. We ate enormously
and relished every mouthful.

Riving lengths of logs with wedges and maul was a kind of work calling for
no special skill; Agathemer taught me all he knew in a day or two. All
winter we alternated this work with woodchopping, afterwards chopping the
riven lengths into firewood lengths and then splitting these into
firewood. Although we worked at riving and chopping and splitting every
moment of daylight when we were not busy at something else, we never
accumulated any comfortable store of firewood, so as to be able to rest
even one day. We drank new milk by the quart, with both our meals; wine,
abundantly as we were supplied with it and good as it proved to be, we
drank sparingly, merely a draught at waking, one after each meal, and one
at bedtime. What we took we took strong, mixing wine and water in equal
proportions.

Both Agathemer and I preferred cows' milk and drank that only, as we gave
cows' milk only to the sick woman. Both children preferred ewes' milk. As
we had no hogs to feed we were put to it what to do with our surplus milk.
Agathemer made a sort of soft cheese, by putting sour curds in a bag and
hanging it up to drain. We both liked this and so did the little girls.
But we could not use much this way. Agathemer, always resourceful, fed the
dog all the goat's milk he would lap up, and, after he had set to curdle
what seemed enough, mixed the rest, while fresh and sweet, with water and
gave this mixture to the cows to drink, saying it increased their yield of
milk. As the winter wore on he fed similarly the best milkers among the
ewes and goats.




CHAPTER XIV

WINTER IN THE MOUNTAINS


Neither Agathemer nor I knew anything about bread-making. He tried, but
merely wasted flour. And both of us hated the wearisome labor of grinding
grain in either of the rough hand-mills which were in the store-house. He
found a means of keeping us well fed, satisfied and looking forward to the
next meal with pleasure. He screened a peck or so of barley, put it to
soak in a crock, and then, when it was swelled, put it in a crock or flat-
bottomed jar, with just enough water to cover it, and bedded this in the
hot coals by the edge of the fire. There, under a tight lid, it stewed and
swelled and steamed all day, unless he judged it done sooner. When it was
cooked to his taste he mixed through it cheese, raisins, and several sorts
of flavorings, also a little honey. The porridge-like product he baked, as
it were, by turning a larger crock over the crock containing it. The
result was always tasty and relishable.

I asked him why he used barley, not wheat, of which there was quite a
supply. He said barley was supposed to be heating, and we certainly needed
all the heating we could get.

The old smoked cheeses, of which an amazing number hung in the hut and
store-houses, were, to me, very appetizing, used in this way, though too
strongly flavored for me to eat any quantity of any sort as one would eat
normal cheese. Agathemer said they had all been smoked too soon, while the
cheese was yet soft, so that the smoke had penetrated all through the
cheese. Certainly the outside of each cheese was mere soot to the depth of
an inch, so that we had to throw it away. Even Hylactor would not eat it.

Soon after the first hard freeze we found, one morning, one of the goats
with a leg broken. Agathemer, with me to help him, got her out into one of
the buildings, out of sight or hearing of the other animals; and, there
later, butchered her. We had, by this time, found butchering knives and
kitchen knives, to the number of a score, but each hidden by itself, and
in the oddest places, one under a sill of the cowshed, another under a
wine-jar, several between the rafters and thatch, most buried in the
thatch itself, as if they had been hidden on purpose. They were all rusty,
but we soon had them bright and sharp. With some of these we butchered and
cut up the goat. The offal we fed to Hylactor, not much at a time. Most of
the rest of her we ate, a little at a time, as the frost kept the meat
from spoiling.

The kidneys Agathemer used first. He washed them, soaked them, parboiled
them, cut them into bits, fried the bits in olive oil, and then, when they
were crisp, stirred some of them through one of his crocks of cooked
barley. The result was delicious. The kidneys sufficed for two or three
crocks of barley. Then he did something similar with the liver with a
result almost as appetizing.

We had some chops, broiled over the hot coals; also collops, spitted, with
bits of fat bacon between. But neither of us cared much for goat's meat,
and Agathemer's attempt at a broth made of the tougher meat was not a
success. It had a repulsive smell and a more repulsive taste, though it
seemed nourishing. He made only one pot of broth. After that we fed the
coarser parts, little by little, to Hylactor.

This loss of one goat led Agathemer to do some thinking. There was a
pretty large supply of hay, but not enough to keep in good milk all
through the winter, until grass grew next spring, two cows, eight ewes and
twenty goats. We talked the matter over. The ram and the he-goat were
manifestly of choice breeding stock, probably carefully selected and
cherished. We judged their owner would be angry if he did not find them on
his return. So Agathemer considered which of the ewes gave the least milk
and promised least as a breeder, and, after all the goat's meat was used
up, we killed her. Sheep's-kidneys and sheep's-liver are better eating
than goat's-kidneys and goat's-liver. We both agreed on that and we liked
mutton chops and mutton cutlets. Hylactor got only the offal and the
coarser bits, the rest Agathemer made into a relishable broth flavored
with marjoram, bay-leaves and other herbs.

During the winter he killed six more goats and one more ewe, so that we
fed, all winter, six ewes and twelve goats. For these the hay sufficed and
not a little was left when we departed.

For ourselves, while we wasted nothing, we were lavish with the food
stores. The bitter cold and our unremitting toil all day long, at a
thousand other tasks and always at preparing fire-wood, contributed to
keep us ravenous. We ate heartily twice a day, never taking anything
between meals except all the milk we chose to drink, and I found ewes'
milk and goats' milk, yet warm, or milked that morning, good to drink in
cold weather. Often we mixed hot water with the goats' milk and drank the
mixture while warm.

One intensely cold and brilliantly clear day, as I was riving a log,
panting and glowing with the labor, yet with fingers numb and feet aching
with the cold, I heard a yell from Agathemer. Axe in hand, my left hand
making sure that my knife was loose in its sheath, where I wore it stuck
in my belt, I raced to the store-house. There I found Agathemer alone,
unhurt, standing by an olive-jar, staring into it.

"What is wrong?" I queried.

"Nothing wrong," he said, "but something amazing."

He fumbled in the jar, reaching his arm down into it as far as he could,
his arm-pit tight down on the rim. After some straining he held up his
hand, all dripping with dregs, and, between his thumb and forefinger,
exhibited an unmistakable gold coin. How many there were in that jar we
never knew; there were too many to count. We turned the jar over on its
side, with some labor, and made sure that there were enough gold coins in
it to weigh more than either I or Agathemer weighed and we were about
normal-sized men, in every way.

We discussed this find a good deal. We agreed that the coins were of no
use to us and could be of no use to us. As we meant to pass ourselves off
for Sabine cattle-buyers until we were out of Umbria, as we meant to press
on to Aquileia, as soon as the weather was warm enough, as we meant to
pass ourselves off for runaway slaves, if we were arrested and questioned
gold coins in our possession would have been most dangerous to us. We
agitated the idea of sewing a few into the hems of our tunics and into the
ends of our belts; but we came to the conclusion that any attempt to
exchange a gold coin for silver would be very dangerous and much too risky
a venture.

We also agreed that if the master of the place returned he must not
suspect that we knew of his hoard. So we replaced the jar as it had stood,
effaced all signs of its having been moved and refilled it with olives,
taking them from another jar, which proved to contain olives only, all the
way to the bottom.

This find led Agathemer to investigate every jar on the place, running a
long rod of tough wood down into each as a sounder. In another jar of
olives he found a similar hoard of silver denarii. Of these we took as
many as were necessary to replenish the store of coins Chryseros had
furnished us with. Even of silver we dared not carry too much. The hoard
was so large that the handful of coins we took was unlikely ever to be
missed.

The little girls, early in our stay, became entirely accustomed to us and
utterly trustful of us. In the chests Agathemer found other tunics, warmer
than those they had on when we came, which were suited to them. But there
were no cloaks small enough for them to wear. With our precious scissors
Agathemer cut in two the smallest warm cloak he could find and, with the
needles and thread Chryseros had given us, he roughly hemmed the cut edge.
The two awkwardly-shaped cloaks, thus made, the children wore till spring.

We could find no shoes for the children and they went barelegged and
barefooted all the winter. They did not seem to mind it, except on the
most bitterly cold days, when the wind howled about the hut, roaring
through the pines and naked-boughed oaks, blowing before it the snow in
silver dust. Then they kept inside the hut all day. But, on sunny and
windless days, they ran about barefoot in the snow and seemed entirely
indifferent to the cold, though they always appeared glad to dry and warm
their little pink toes at the fire, after they returned to the hut.
Agathemer, more knowing than I, would not let them approach the fire until
they had bathed their feet in a crock of water he kept standing ready
inside the hut door and had partially dried them afterwards. He said that
otherwise their feet would puff and swell and perhaps inflame. They seemed
happy-hearted little beings and Secunda was bright. But Prima was very
dull and less intelligent than her younger sister. We concluded that she
was, while not anything like an idiot, certainly a very backward child,
lacking the wit of a normal child of her age.

After the first snow fell we had no more trouble with violent outbreaks
from the sick woman; or, at least, very little. Her next fit of raving
came about ten days after the first snowfall and began in the daytime,
when both Agathemer and I were in the hut. We forced her back into her bed
and then Agathemer had an inspiration. He bade me hold her where she was
and he took down his flageolet, from where it hung on a high peg on the
partition, and began to play it.

The woman quieted at once and seemed to sink to sleep. After that her
fits, which recurred at frequent intervals, took up little of our time, as
upon each we had only to get her back into her bed and compose her by
means of Agathemer's music.

It was well along towards spring, certainly far towards the end of the
winter, when Agathemer made his most astonishing discovery. By that time
the animals gave no more milk than sufficed for the five of us; there was
no surplus to feed back to the best milkers. Also we had a little reserve
of firewood and did not have to drive ourselves so unremittingly to escape
death by freezing if our fuel gave out.

I was chopping wood in a leisurely way, and enjoying the exercise. The
little girls were inside the hut at the moment, after playing about most
of the morning. Agathemer came out of the store-house, glanced around, and
beckoned to me: together we went inside. There he showed me where he, led
by a very slight difference of color, had dug into the earth floor and
come upon a small maple-wood chest, like a temple treasure-box. It was,
outside, perhaps a foot wide and about as high, and not over a foot and a
half long. He had forced it open with the hatchet and a heavy knife, like
a Spartan wood-knife. The wood of the chest was so thick that the inside
cavity was comparatively small. But it was big enough to have held, say,
two quarts of wine. And it was almost full of jewels; opals, turquoises,
topazes, amethysts, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.

Agathemer shut the store-house door and fastened it so the little girls
could not open it if they should chance to try. Then he spread his cloak
on the earth floor and dumped the contents of the chest on it. Most of the
gems were small, at least two score were very large, and there were many,
of notable, though moderate, size. We could see them fairly well, though
the store-house was dim, since, with the door shut, the only light was
what came through chinks. We ran our fingers through the heap of jewels,
picked up the largest and held them to the light and gained a general idea
of the value of the hoard. We put them all back into the chest, shut it,
and reburied it. It showed no marks of Agathemer's dexterous attempts at
opening it, for the lid was held down only by a clasp outside, and by the
swelling of the inside flange of wood against the overlapping rim of the
lid.

We went out to the woodpile and I resumed my chopping, while Agathemer set
to riving logs with the wedges and maul. We had always kept the little
girls away from the woodpile and so were sure of being alone. Also we
talked Greek as an extra precaution.

Agathemer, resting between assaults on a very big log, said:

"I am of the same opinion I have held since we found the gold. This place
belongs to some Umbrian farmer who is in partnership with a bandit chief
or the leader of a gang of footpads. Just as the King of the Highwaymen is
said to have a brother in Rome, important among the Imperial spies, so
most outlaws have some anchor somewhere with associates apparently honest
and respectable. The owner of this place may be brother of a brigand, or
related to one in some other way or merely a trusted friend. At any rate I
am of the opinion that this fastness is used as a repository for robbers'
loot. Everything points to it. The gems and the coins make it certain, to
my thinking, but even if we had found none of these it is pretty plain
from everything else. There is no sign that there ever was a pig anywhere
about here: yet the store of fine old bacon surpasses anything any mere
farm ever kept on hand; there is not a square yard of ground hereabouts
that ever has been plowed, spaded or hoed: yet the place is crammed with
all sorts of farm produce. Manifestly it was all brought here, where there
are no pigeons to reveal the place by their flight above it, nor any cock
to call attention to it by his crowing. This is not a farm, it is a
treasure-house, lavishly provided with everything portable.

"The absence of the man and the flight of the slaves puzzles me. As for
the slaves, I can form no conjecture. But I am inclined to think it
possible that the man was betrayed somehow to the authorities and is in
prison or has been executed. We must assume, however, that he is alive and
will return and must comport ourselves accordingly.

"Now I tell you what I mean to do. In such a hoard of gems a few of medium
size could never be missed, even if missed, their abstraction could never
be proved. I'm going to select the best of the medium-sized emeralds,
topazes, rubies and sapphires; enough to fill the leather amulet-bags
Chryseros gave us. All slaves wear amulet-bags, if they can get them; ours
are old, worn and soiled and will make unsurpassable hiding places for as
many gems as they will hold. I'll take out the amulets and sew them into
the hems of our tunics, at the corners. I'll fill the bags as full of gems
as is possible without making them look unusually plump. Then, if we reach
Aquileia, we shall have a source of cash enough to last us years; for I
can sell the jewels one at a time at high prices."

"Are you sure that the stones are worth all that care?" I cavilled. "May
you not be mistaken as to their value or even as to their genuineness?"

"Not I," Agathemer bragged. "I am one of the foremost gem experts alive.
Your uncle, as you know, held it a wicked waste of money for a sickly
bachelor to buy gems; but he was a natural-born gem fancier. He knew every
famous jewel in Rome: every one of the Imperial regalia, every one ever
worn by anyone at any festival or entertainment, every one in every
fancier's collection of jewels. From him I learned all I know: I myself
possess the faculties to profit by my training. I know more of gems than
most, I tell you!"

I agreed, and, during the nest few days, he selected the stones he judged
most valuable, enough to fill the hollow of one of my hands and as much
for him, and sewed the two batches up in our emptied amulet-bags. The
amulets, which were two Egyptian scarabs and two Babylonian seals, very
crude in workmanship and of the meanest glazed pottery, he sewed into the
corners of our tunics.

Soon after this came the first thaw of the spring; a mild sunny day
cleared every bough of every tree of the last vestiges of clinging snow or
ice. Then we had two days of warm rain, sometimes a drizzle, sometimes a
downpour. Then, on the fourth day, the sky was clear again and the
sunshine strong.

As usual after my morning duties, I went in to take a look at our
insensible hostess. She lay, as she had mostly lain all winter, breathing
almost imperceptibly, her eyes closed. As I bent over her, her eyes
opened.

She sat up, wide-eyed, startled, the picture of amazement and it came over
me that she was no peasant woman, but a lady.

"Who are you?" she demanded, supporting herself on one elbow. "I do not
know you; what are you doing here?"

"I have been helping to nurse you," I said. "You have been ill a long time
and have needed much care. Lie down; you will hinder your recovery if you
exert yourself too soon."

She lay back, but propped herself up on her pillows, and in no weak voice
insisted on knowing who I was.

At that instant Agathemer entered. He, far more diplomatic than I, took
charge of the situation. The woman, instead of losing consciousness again
at once, as I expected, appeared possessed of much more strength than
anyone would have anticipated and asked searching questions.

Agathemer, tactfully but without any attempt at beating about the bush,
told her the whole truth, as to her illness, our finding her alone with
the two children, our care of her, and the length of our stay. He said
afterwards that he hoped the shock would cure her.

"Am I to understand you to say," she asked, "that I have been in this bed
since the middle of the autumn and that it is now almost spring?"

"Just that," said Agathemer simply.

"And that you two men have been, practically, in possession of this entire
place all that time?"

"That is true also," I said.

Agathemer and I looked at each other. We had used our one pair of scissors
mutually and our hair and beards were not shaggy or bushy. But we were a
rough, rather fierce-looking, pair.

"This," she said, "is terrible, terrible! Where are my daughters?"

"Playing about out in the sunshine," I said. "Plump and well-fed, and
healthy and cheerful."

"This," she repeated, "is terrible, terrible! May I not see them, may I
not speak to them, will you not bring them to me?"

"Indeed we will," I said and motioned to Agathemer. While he was gone the
woman and I regarded each other without speaking. When Agathemer returned
with the children I said:

"We will leave you to talk to your daughters alone. When you wish us to
return send one of the children for us."

The joy of the two at the sight of their mother, sensible and able to
recognize them, was pathetic. Sobbing and laughing, they flung themselves
on the bed and embraced her, kissing her and she kissing each.

We went out and set to chopping and riving wood.

Before very long Secunda came out and said her mother wanted to speak to
me. Leaving Agathemer plying his maul I went in.

The woman was now well propped up against a heap of pillows. She told the
children to run off and play till she sent for them. Then she motioned me
to seat myself on the chest. I did so.

She regarded me fixedly, as she had while Agathemer had gone for the
children. When she spoke she asked:

"What god do you worship?"

I was amazed at this unusual and unexpected question and hesitated a
moment before I answered:

"Mercury, chiefly. Of course, Jupiter and Juno; Dionysius, Apollo,
Minerva. But most of all Mercury."

She sighed.

"I had expected a very different answer," she said. "But, whatever god or
gods you worship, you are a good man and your servant is a good man. I am
amazed. My children were truthful till I fell ill. I am sure they could
not have changed in one winter. In any case Secunda's precocity and
Prima's vacuity seem equally incapable of any deception. What they tell me
is all but incredible, yet I believe it. You two men have acted to me and
mine as if you had been my blood kin. If you two had been my own brothers
you could have done no more for us. I shall always be grateful. What are
your names?"

Agathemer and I had agreed to use the names Sabinus Felix and Bruttius
Asper. These names, common enough in Sabinum, we, in fact, had given at
the farms where Agathemer's flageolet-playing won us entertainment in the
autumn. I gave them now. I added:

"It seems best to me that you should not ask either whence we came or
whither we are bound."

"I understand," she said.

"And now," said I, "since you have our names, tell us how we should
address the mother of Prima and Secunda."

"My name," she said, "is Nona. [Footnote: Ninth.] My mother had a larger
family than I am ever likely to be blest with."

Nona recovered with marvellous rapidity. The weather continued fair and
warm, with no strong winds, only steady, gentle breezes. This aided her,
as it dried out the hut. She slept well at night, she said, and heavily in
the afternoons. When awake she ate heartily and was almost alert. She
questioned me again and again as to the condition in which we had found
the place. I told her the exact truth, except as to finding the hoards of
coins and jewels, to the smallest detail. I also told her of our
stewardship and of our having killed and eaten a brace of ewes and eight
goats. She approved.

I asked her about the children's tale of the slaves running away.

She sighed.

"I should have trusted any one of the seven," she said. "I believed that
any one of them would have been faithful. I suppose almost all slaves are
alike, after all. Hermes died about midsummer. He was the oldest of them
and the best. I suppose that, in past winters, he had kept the others to
their duty. But then, I was never ill before. Without Hermes to lead them,
without me to order them, I suppose what they did was natural."

I told her of the great cold and abundant snow of the winter. She
questioned me and said:

"Evidently you have had more cold and snow in one winter than I have had
in ten."

On the third day after her revival she was able to get out of bed and,
leaning heavily on me, to reach the door of the hut. There she sat basking
in the sun, Secunda on one side of her, Prima on the other, Hylactor at
her feet.

Hylactor had proved himself a perfect watchdog that winter. We had never
allowed him to sleep in the hut, as he would have done if permitted, and
as he tried to do at first. Agathemer had fashioned him a tiny shelter and
into it he crawled nightly. Out of it, also, he dashed, if any sound or
scent roused him. Tracks of wolves were frequent in the snow out in the
forest, and not a few approached our clearing. But we lost not one sheep
or goat to any wolf. Hylactor frightened off most and killed three, a
medium-sized female and two full-grown young males, at the acme of their
fighting powers. We rated Hylactor a paragon among dogs.

The warm weather held on, though unseasonable so early in the year. Nona
recovered so rapidly that she was able to visit each of the outbuildings.
Just when she was well enough to walk alone and firmly came a sharp spell
of cold, as unseasonable as had been the heat. It began about noon, one
clear day, with a high wind. By sunset everything was frozen.

Nona said:

"You two have had more than your share of sleeping on the earth floor by
the fire. My bed will hold me and my girls, for a few nights. You two take
their bed. It will be cold on the floor tonight."

That night, therefore, Agathemer and I enjoyed a sound night's sleep in a
deep, soft bed. It was our first night in a Gallic bed, and we liked it.
Since our crawl through the drain we had slept abed but four times, at
farms in the Umbrian mountains. This was best of all. And we had a
succession of nights of it, for the cold held on and, even when it abated,
Nona insisted on our continuing to sleep so.

During the cold she mixed a batch of bread, and Agathemer baked it. She
had praised his cookery, especially his savory messes of steamed barley,
flavored with cheese, raisins and what not. But when the cold snap came
after the thaws she suggested that we grind some wheat and she make bread.
We acceded with alacrity. The bread tasted unbelievably good.

As soon as the weather was again warm it was plain that spring was coming
in earnest. Nona stood out of doors after sunset, went out again after
dark, staring up at the sky.

Next morning, while the children were at play, she said to me:

"Felix, you and Asper must leave this place at once and be on your way. My
husband will return soon. He may return any day now. He is a terrible man.
He will come with too many men for you to resist and he will not ask any
questions until after he has killed you both. I know him. If I could be
sure of telling him before he saw you what manner of men you are and how
deeply I am in your debt he would repay you lavishly, for he is liberal
and generous. But, being what he is, if he finds you here, you will be
dead before I can explain. You must go. Prepare to set off at dawn
tomorrow."

I told Agathemer and he agreed with me that we had best do as Nona said.
She was, as she averred, well enough to care for herself and the children.
But we lingered next day. By dusk she was frantic, begging, imploring us
to depart at dawn. I feared a recurrence of her illness and gave her my
promise.

We set off, actually, not at dawn, but about an hour after sunrise, the
broad brims of our travelling hats flapping in the wind, our cloaks close
about us, our wallets slung over our shoulders, our staffs in our hands.
At the hut door Nona, Prima and Secunda bade us farewell, Nona thanking
and blessing us. Hylactor was for following us: we had to order him back,
for he paid more attention to us than to Nona.

With a last backward glance at the edge of the clearing we plunged into
the forest by the track leading northward.

We had not gone a hundred paces when I thought I heard a scream and
stopped. Agathemer declared he had heard nothing. But, listening, we did
hear twigs snapping and Hylactor bounded into sight. He did not fawn on
us, but seized my cloak in his teeth and tugged, growling and snarling.

"That dog," said Agathemer, "is asking for help. He knows what is too much
for him to fight."

We threw off our shoes, wallets and cloaks, tucked up our tunics and,
staffs in one hand and sheathless knives in the other, barefoot, raced
back along the track after the guiding dog.

From that entrance of the clearing the outbuildings hid the hut from us.
When our rush brought us in sight of the hut door we were not six paces
from it and just in time to see Hylactor spring on and bear to the earth a
man who stood before it. Leaving him to Hylactor we dashed inside, urged
by indubitable shrieks.

In the dim interior we made out each child struggling with a man and Nona
with two. Before they could turn our knives had slaughtered the children's
assailants. One of the survivors Agathemer cracked over the head with his
staff. I stabbed the other. Whereupon Agathemer cut the throat of the man
he had downed, and dashing outside, finished the man Hylactor was
worrying. Quicker than it takes to tell it the five were dead.

Nona had fainted, as we rescued her. But Agathemer revived her with a dash
of cold water in her face and some strong wine poured between her lips. We
laid her on her bed and told the children to watch her. Then we dragged
out the corpses, laid them in a row and considered them. All five were
pattern ruffians; black-haired, burly, brutal and fierce. We had had
amazing luck to dispose of them so easily. Five lucky flukes, Agathemer
called it, and we without a scratch.

One by one we picked them up and carried them off, down the slope, to a
soft bit of soil among some beeches. There we laid them in a row. On them
we found a few silver coins, five daggers, five knives, five amulet-bags,
nothing else. Their tunics and cloaks were old and of poor material.

Back to the hut we went and found Nona revived and at the door.

"Begone!" she said. "Flee! Hasten! That man was my husband's bitterest
enemy. He was intent on revenge. But he could never have found this place
save by tracking my husband and conjecturing his destination. My husband
must have camped last night less than a day's journey from here. He will
be here today, he may be here any moment. Save yourselves. Begone!"

Agathemer and I looked at each other.

"We shall not set off," I said, "until we have buried the five corpses.
I'm not going to be haunted on my way and perhaps for life by any such
spooks as the ghosts of those five ruffians. We shall make sure that they
are safely buried."

Agathemer agreed with me and we set about the task. During the winter we
had found mattocks, pickaxes, hoes, spades and shovels hid in the most
unlikely places, each by itself, and had hafted them; with these we dug a
big pit and in it laid the five corpses, and buried them too deep for any
wolf, badger or other creature to be at all likely to smell them and dig
them out or dig down to them.

When the men were buried it was past noon. We went back to the hut, drank
a second draught of the strongest and sweetest wine and drank it unmixed,
as we had drunk our first before we set about carrying the corpses into
the forest. Nona renewed her adjurations to begone.

But neither I nor Agathemer would listen to her. I said I was far too
tired to travel until after a night's sleep and that after having saved
her and her daughters, it was no more than fair that she should stand
watch over us while we slept all the afternoon: she could easily watch at
the hut door and explain matters to her terrible husband if he came and
were as terrible as she averred.

We retrieved our wallets, cloaks and shoes, threw them down in a corner of
the hut, ate some bread with plenty of milk to wash it down, and went to
sleep in the children's bed, as we had slept the night before. We woke
before sunset, did what was needful about the place, ate a hearty dinner
of bread, bacon, olives, raisins and wine and at once went to bed for the
night. After dark Nona ceased adjuring us to begone; she said that, if her
husband came, she would hear him at the hut door and make him aware of the
facts in time to prevent any trouble. We slept till sunrise.  Then Nona
declared that she and the children could milk the animals. We agreed with
her, for they had little milk by then. We ate a hearty breakfast and set
off.




CHAPTER XV

THE HUNT


That day we met no one and made a long march north-westwards along the
flank of the mountain, camping at dusk by a spring. There we rehearsed our
rescue of Nona and marvelled at the ease with which we had disposed of
five burly ruffians. Agathemer agreed with me that it had been mostly the
effect of complete surprise. But he took a good deal of the credit to
himself. He reminded me how he had practiced me, ever since we began our
flight, at the art of fighting with knives, at knife attack in general. In
particular he had drilled me, as well as he could without a corpse or
dummy to practice on, at the favorite stroke of professional murderers,
the stab under the left shoulder-blade, the point of the knife or dagger
directed a little upward so as to reach the heart. By this stroke I had
killed both my victims, and he one of his. I acknowledged his claims, but
was inclined to thank the gods for special aid and favor. We discussed
that amazingly lucky fight until too sleepy to talk any more.

Next day we met some charcoal burners, who were both friendly and
unsuspicious and who gave us intelligible directions for making our way
towards Sarsina. The second night we again camped in the woods; the third
we spent at a farmhouse, thanks to Agathemer's flageolet.

The farmer, whose name was Caesus, told a grewsome tale of the horrors of
the plague and of the death of almost all his slaves. He was gloomy about
his future, as he, his two sons, and their surviving slave were too few to
work his farm. He seemed to regard us as fugitives from justice and as men
whom it was his duty to help and protect. As the season was too early for
comfortable travelling along byways or for safety from suspicion along
highways, and as he welcomed us, we spent a month with him, well fed, well
lodged and rather enjoying the hard farm work and the outdoor life, though
we spent also much time under-cover, working at what could be done under
shelter during heavy rains.

After he had come to feel at ease with us, our host, one day when we three
were alone, asked:

"Are you some of the King of the Highwaymen's men?"

On our disclaiming any connection with the King of the Highwaymen, or any
knowledge of such a character, he sighed and said:

"Oh, well! Of course, if you were, you would deny it, anyhow. You may be
or you may not be. Anyhow, if you are, tell him I treated you well and
shall always do my best for any man I take for one of his men.

"You don't look like his kind nor act like any I ever was sure of, but he
has all sorts. I thought it best to make sure. It is best to stand well
with him. He passes somewhere near here every spring or early summer on
his way north and again in the autumn on his way south."

We left this bourne only on the solstice, the tenth day before the Kalends
of July, and trudged comfortably to Sarsina, where we put up at the inn,
frequented by foot-farers like us. So also at Caesena and Faventia. There
we agreed that we had had enough of the highway, as we might encounter
some Imperial spies of the regular secret service department, and not a
few of these spies might know me by sight in any disguise. So we struck
off due north through the almost level open country, intending to keep on
northward until we came to the Spina and to follow that to the Po. As
Agathemer said, if we could not find ferrymen by day we could steal a
skiff by night.

Not far north of Faventia, after an easy-going day's march under a mild
spring sky, we came, just before sunset, to a forest of considerable
extent. As we could not conjecture whether to turn east or west, we camped
at its edge and slept soundly, comfortable in our cloaks, for the night
was warm and still.

Next morning the weather was so charming that we were tempted to plunge
into the forest and cross it as nearly due north as we could guide
ourselves by the sun. Since we reached the edge of the forest we had seen
no human-being near enough for us to ask in which direction we had best
try to go round it. We plunged into it and in it we wasted the entire day.

The country is very flat between Faventia and the Spina. I do not believe
that in any part of that forest the surface of the soil was four yards
higher than in any other part. And it was marshy, all quagmires and
sloughs, with narrow, sinuous ribbons, as it were, of fairly dry land
between them. We were hopelessly involved among its morasses before we
realized our plight and, after we did realize it, we seemed to make little
progress. We agreed that it would be folly to try to regain our camp: we
held to our purpose and tried to advance northwards. But we doubled right
and left, had to retrace our steps often and could form no idea how far we
had penetrated.

There was an astonishing abundance of game in that forest: hares
everywhere; does with fawns, young does, and not a few stags; wild boars,
which fled, grunting, out of their wallows as we approached; foxes of
which we three times glimpsed one at a distance; and we came on
indubitable wolf tracks. We had plenty of food and ate some at noon, for
we were tired. Then we spent the day threading the mazes of that swampy
forest. We were careful not to get bogged and we kept our tunics and
cloaks dry, though we were mired to the knees. But our very care delayed
us. The day was breezy and mild but not really warm, so that we did not
suffer from the heat. But by nightfall we were exhausted and had no idea
how far we had advanced northward. Just at dusk we came to reasonably firm
going and walked due north about a furlong. There, as the twilight
deepened, we encountered another stretch of ooze. We retreated from it a
dozen paces and camped under some swamp-maples on comfortably dry ground.
We ate about half of our food, bread, olives, and dried figs; and while
eating dried and warmed our feet and shanks at a generous fire of fallen
boughs, which Agathemer, who was clever with flint and steel, had made
quickly. When our feet felt as if they really belonged to us, we wrapped
ourselves in our cloaks and slept soundly.

We slept, indeed, so soundly, that it was broad day when, we waked. And we
waked to hear the wood ringing with the barking and baying of dogs and
with the cries of hunters and beaters. Instantly we realized that we were
in danger. For a hunt of such size as was approaching us must have been
gotten up by a coterie of wealthy land-owners; and such magnates, if they
caught sight of us, would at once suspect us of being runaway slaves. It
had been easy enough to pass ourselves off for farmerly cattle-buyers in
the Umbrian Mountains. But, habited as we were, camped in the depths of a
thick, swampy forest, we were sure to be suspected of being runaway slaves
by anyone who encountered us; and such gentry as organize big hunts with
swarms of beaters are always prone to suspect any footfarers of being
runaway slaves.

We hastily girded ourselves for flight, meanwhile reminding each other of
the story we had planned to tell if caught.

At first we seemed to have luck. We turned westwards away from the beaters
and found and passed the upper end of the morass which had stopped us the
night before. From there the going was good, through open underbrush,
beneath big beeches and chestnuts, over firm and gently rolling ground.
Stopping and listening we tried to judge by the sounds the location of the
line of beaters. We seemed to have a chance of getting beyond its western
end. We set off again; just as we started on nine deer dashed past us, a
big stag, two young stags and six does.

Then we did run, for we knew it was our last chance and, indeed, but
little further, a young wolf raced down a ferny glade, vanishing into some
alders on the further side of the glade. I nearly trod on a fleeing hare.
The beaters could not be far off.

Yet, for a bit, we seemed to be gaining on them, although we were
quartering their front on a long slant. The third time we stopped to pant
and listen we thought that our next dash would carry us where we might
crouch in the first thicket and let their line sweep past us.

But, some fifty yards or so beyond, when we came to the dancing red
feathers on the cord and thought we would be safe in a few breaths, there
rose at us, from behind the feathered cord, three stocky men, armed with
broad-bladed hunting-spears, who yelled at us:

"Halt! Stand! Surrender!"

We recoiled from them, amazed, threw away our wallets, threw off our
cloaks, and bolted, incredulous; and as we ran, we heard them yelling:

"Here! Here! Here they are! We see them! This way, all of you! We've got
them! Here they are!"

No bogs, no sloughs turned us or delayed us. The going was good, over firm
footing, through light underwoods, among wide-set, big trees. For our
lives we ran. There seemed a very slender chance of our crossing the whole
length of the line of beaters and escaping on the other side, but that
slender chance seemed our only chance. We ran fit to burst our hearts.

And the hunt was plainly converging on us. The noises of the beaters drew
nearer. We seemed in a swarm of fleeing hares: more deer and more deer
passed us, this time, I thought, does with young fawns. We caught a
glimpse of another wolf, of two foxes. And, in a moist hollow, we barely
avoided a nasty rush of eight panic-stricken, grunting wild swine.

We did run across the entire line of beaters, but little good it did us.
Again we saw before us the feathered cord, the scarlet plumes dancing in
the sun. At it we ran, sure of safety if we passed it unseen and
penetrated even ten yards beyond it into the underbrush. But we were again
disappointed.

This time only two huntsmen rose at us, but they, too, flourished hunting
spears with gleaming points, as big as spades. They too yelled at us and
yelled to their fellows:

"Halt! You are caught! Hands up! Give yourselves up!"

And:

"There they go! Both of them! Come on! Here they are!"

Off we went again, slanting back across the approaching line of dogs and
beaters, now closer together as they drew on towards the nets, and already
appallingly close to us. Again we crossed the whole line, now much
shorter. But this time we ran, not against part of the long stretch of
feathered cord, but against the outer yard-high net. Of course this was
well guarded and again we were yelled at and turned back.

Doubling back, now steaming, panting, gasping, with knees trembling under
us, we reached the net on the other side.

Turned again, we found the beaters so near us and so close together, that
we ran away from them rather than across their line. We ran, in fact, in
a sort of mob of hares, foxes, boars, deer and even wolves, for some of
each were in sight every moment.

So running we came where we could see the line of nets, now of six-foot,
heavy-meshed nets, on either side of us. We made a last, desperate dash at
one of the nets, I hoping to leap it or vault it or clamber over it and
escape, after all. But six keepers, all with broad-bladed hunting spears,
rose at us beyond it, rose with triumphant yells:

"We've got you now! We've got you now!"

From them we shied off and ran, half staggering with exhaustion and
despair, between the converging lines of nets, ran in a veritable press of
terrified game of all sorts, ran madly, since we heard now, not the
barking and whine of dogs straining at their leashes, but the exultant
yelping, barking and baying of great packs of dogs unleashed behind their
game.

Of course, although no single dog, however infuriated, would ever attack
me in daylight, when it could see my face, yet I could do nothing whatever
to protect myself, and far less Agathemer, against the massed onset of
more than a hundred maddened hunting dogs, each bigger than a full-grown
wolf.

So running, staggering, stumbling, at the end of our strength, we found
ourselves running into the battue-pocket at the meeting of the two long
converging lines of nets. Anything would be better than that. We tried to
double back and were met by a dozen big dogs, some Gallic dogs of the
breed of Tolosa, spotted black and white, others mouse-colored Molossians.
To escape them we dodged apart, each ran for a tree, each jumped, each
caught the lowest limb of a thick-foliaged maple, the two not much over
five yards apart. So thick were their leaves that I could hardly make out
Agathemer in his tree. The two maples were close to the beginning of the
pocket net. From my perch I could see plainly how cunningly the pocket had
been set.

It was of strong, close-meshed nets fully three yards high stretched on
sturdy forked stakes and well guyed back outside to pegs like tent-pegs.
These pocketing nets were set along the tops of the two banks of a gully
about twenty yards wide, sloping sharply downward from its top near our
trees and with sides three or four yards high and steep. Once in this
gully, between the pocketing nets along the upper edge of its sides, no
boar could scramble out, the lower meshes of the pocketing nets were too
fine for any hare to squeeze through; no doe, no stag even, could leap
such nets at the top of such banks.

I could just spy a part of the heaviest net across the gully at the end of
the pocket. It seemed a large meshed net of rope thicker than my knee,
with the large meshes filled in with smaller meshes of rope the size of my
wrist.

Hardly was I safe in the crotch of my tree when the last of the game swept
by below us, the dogs hot behind them, up came the press of beaters, and,
from each side, in rushed the hunters, a score of handsome nobles and
gentry, habited in green tunics, wearing small, green, round-crowned,
narrow-brimmed hunting hats and green boots up to just below their knees.
Each carried a heavy shafted hunting spear, tipped with a huge triangular
gleaming head, pointed like a needle, edged like a razor, broad as a spade
at its flare.

Even in my terror and exhaustion I could not but feel a certain pleasure
in the beauty of the scene, a sort of thrill at its strangeness. I had
participated in such hunts in Bruttium and Sabinum, but never as hunted
game.

The sun was not yet half way up the heavens, the dew had not yet dried
from the leaves, owing to the very late spring the freshness of springtime
had not yet passed into the fullness of early summer. Through the tender
green of the young leafage, starry with drops of moisture, the sunshine
shot long shafts of golden light. Under the beautiful canopy of blue sky
and golden green foliage was the amazing turmoil of the hunt.

More than a hundred large animals, pigs, fawns, sows, does, boars and
stags had fled before the beaters and were now jammed pellmell in the
gully, for the end-net held. There they frantically jostled each other and
the half dozen wolves caught among them which, indeed, snapped, slashed
and tore at everything within reach, but, cowed themselves, had no effect
whatever on the maddened victims which all but trod them under and
actually trampled on foxes and on the swarm of squeaking, helpless hares.

Upon this mass of terrified flesh the two hundred dogs flung themselves,
through the nets the huntsmen stabbed at the nearest victims, behind the
dogs the shouting hunters advanced to spear their game, the battue was on
and I watched it till the last animal was flat. The few which, frenzied,
doubled back through the dogs and hunters were met and killed by the
beaters. Not one escaped.

As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon
surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen.

Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped,
whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves
mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets,
execrations and curses.

We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three
captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have
collapsed on the earth.

We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we
were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either
elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together,
naked, bruised, bloody, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a
few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the
gentlemen came up out of the gully.

Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat
in his hand and mopping his forehead.

"Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not
the men at all! They are not in the least like them!"

"Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added.

"What a pack of asses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two
strangers. Couldn't you look at them before you mauled them?"

"We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined.
"Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their
backs."

They turned us round, to display the marks of scourging still plain on us
both.

"They've both been branded," said a gentleman's voice.

"Pooh!" cried another, "that proves nothing. They may have been scourged
and branded by former masters, and manumitted since. I'll have no stranger
ill-treated on my land until he has had a chance to explain himself."

While he was speaking my guards turned me round again and took their hands
off me.

Our champion was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very
curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy,
curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and
mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He
wore senators' boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant green
and embroidered all over with a flowering vine in a darker, glossier
green.

"What are your names?" asked the elder man who had noticed our brand-
marks. He was swarthy and probably over thirty.

I gave him the name of Felix and Agathemer that of Asper, as we had
agreed, neither of us thinking it advisable to claim to be free Romans by
prefixing, "Sabinus" and "Bruttius."

"Shut up, Marcus," our champion ordered, "can't you see that these poor
fellows are in no condition to answer any questions? We'll interrogate
them after they have bathed, eaten and slept."

"Here, Trogus," he called to one of the chief-huntsman's assistants, "take
charge of these two fellows. Treat them well; if they report any
incivility or omission on your part I'll make you regret it. When they are
bathed and fed, let them sleep all they want to.

"And, here, Umbro" (this to the head-huntsman), "see that their effects
are found and restored to them."

He turned to us.

"Did you have wallets?" he asked.

We nodded, too shaken to speak.

"Umbro," he said, "scour the wood. Have their shoes, their cloaks and
especially their wallets found and brought to me. And make sure that
nothing is taken from those wallets, that they are handed to their owners
as they were found. If they find anything missing, I'll make you and your
men smart. Be prompt! Be lively. Get those wallets and cloaks and shoes."

While he gave these orders, some beaters brought us our torn tunics;
which, even so, were better than no clothing at all. We put them on.

Then we were led off to the edge of a forest, bestowed in a light Gallic
gig, drawn by one tall roan mule only, and in it, the driver sitting at
our feet, sideways, on one shaft, his legs hanging down, we were driven
off through a beautiful gently rolling country, clothed with the
superabundant crops, vines and orchards of the lower Po Valley, all bathed
in brilliant spring sunshine, to a magnificent villa, most opulently
provided with white-walled, neat outbuildings, all roofed with red tiles.
In one of these, apparently the house of the farm-overseer, we were
bathed, clothed with fresh tunics, far better than our own, lavishly fed
and led to rest in tiny white-washed rooms, very plain, but clean and
airy, where we went to sleep on corded cots provided with very thin grass-
stuffed mattresses.

When we woke each found his wallet beside his cot, set on his neatly
folded cloak; with our old worn shoes, well cleaned, on the floor by the
folded cloaks.

Later we were led before our host and champion, who turned out to be
Tarrutenus Spinellus; in no wise, it seemed, affected, by the downfall of
his great kinsman. He questioned us and Agathemer told the story we had
agreed on: that we had been slaves of Numerius Vedius of Aquileia, who had
been kind to both of us and had made him overseer and me accountant of his
vegetable farms on the sandy islets offshore along the coast of the
Adriatic by Aquileia. There we had lived contentedly till we had been
captured by raiding Liburnian pirates from the Dalmatian islands. They had
sold us at Ancona, where we had been horribly mistreated by a cruel and
savage master, who had branded and scourged us for imaginary
delinquencies.

From him we had run away, intent on making our way back to Aquileia and to
our rightful owner.

"This all sounds plausible," said Tarrutenus, "and I believe you, and it
falls out well. For my cousin, Cornelius Vindex, will leave tomorrow or
next day for Aquileia and you can travel in his company all the way."

We were well fed and lodged while at Villa Spinella. While there we
learned that Lupercus and Rufinus, the two escaped malefactors for whom we
had been mistaken by the huntsmen and beaters, had been runaway slaves,
long uncatchable and lurking in swamps and forests, who had lately, tried
to rob at night the store-house of a farmstead: and who, when the farmer
rushed out to defend his property, had murdered him and even thereafter,
in mere wantonness, had also murdered two of his slaves, his wife and a
young daughter. This horrible crime had roused the whole countryside to
hunt them down and the great battue in which we had been involved had been
organized at a time of the year most unusual and ruinous to the increase
of deer-herds, precisely in order to snare the outlaws along with the
game. They had not been caught and we had.

After two nights' good sleep, and a day's rest, with excellent and
abundant meals, we set off at dawn in Cornelius' convoy, our precious
amulet-bags untouched; our wallets just as we had flung them down in the
forest, not a coin missing; and we were clothed in new good tunics, our
bruises pretty well healed up or healing nicely, ourselves well content
with our escape, but meditating a second escape, this time from,
Cornelius.

For we had no stomach for the road to Aquileia, if in such company that we
must present ourselves before Vedius as claiming to be slaves of his.

We escaped easily enough, just after crossing the Po, by sneaking off in
the darkness from a villa where Cornelius, stopped overnight with a
friend. Without any difficulty we recrossed the Po, not far below
Hostilia, and from there made for Parma.

For we agreed that, after our story to Tarrutenus, with Cornelius Vindex
in Aquileia, Aquileia would be no fit bourne for us. So we decided, after
all, to risk the highway from Parma to Dertona and from there make our way
across the Ligurian Mountains to Vada Sabatia and from there along the
highway to Marseilles, where we should be able to hide in the slums among
the mixture of all races in that lively city; and where Agathemer was sure
he could turn gems into cash without danger or suspicion.

All, went well with us till we reached Placentia. There we put up at an
inn. As we were leaving the town next morning, when we were about half way
from the inn to the Clastidian Gate, Agathemer gripped my arm and motioned
me up a side street. We walked with every indication of leisurely
indifference until we had taken several turns and were alone in a narrow
street. Then he told me that we had barely missed coming face to face with
Gratillus himself.

This barely missed encounter with one of the most dreaded of the Emperor's
spies, a man who knew me perfectly and who had always disliked me, so
terrified both of us that we left Placentia by the Nuran Gate and made our
way southwestward into the Apennines.

Once in the mountains we avoided every good road we saw and kept to bad
byways, until we were completely lost.




CHAPTER XVI

THE CAVE


The late spring or early summer weather was hot and clear. We had been
pressing on feverishly and were heated, tired and sleepy, when, while
following a faint track through dense woods, we took a wrong turn and soon
found that we had utterly lost our way. The sunlight was intensely
brilliant and the windless air sweltering. Stumbling over rocks and
through bushes was exhausting. We came upon a little spring and quenched
our thirst. Standing by it and staring about we noticed what looked like
an opening in an inconspicuous vine-clad cliff. It was, in fact, the
entrance to a spacious and, apparently, extensive cave.

The outer opening was about the size of an ordinary door. Though it was
well masked by beeches above and cornel bushes below, such was the
position of the sun and so intense was the flood of light it poured down
from the cloudless sky, that the inside of the cave, for some little
distance, was faintly discernible in the glimmer which penetrated there.
After our eyes had become accustomed to the darkness we could make out
fairly well the shape and proportions of the first considerable grotto.

From the outer opening a passage about a yard wide and two yards high
extended straight into the cliff for about four yards. There it bent
sharply to the right in an elbow. This offset extended three or four yards
and then bent to the left in a similar elbow, opening into a cavern more
than fifteen yards wide, twice as long or longer, and with a roof of dim
white pendants like alabaster, no part of which was less than five yards
from the conveniently level, rather damp floor, while some parts of it
were lofty.

The two elbows in the entrance passage made it impossible to see into this
cavern from anywhere out in the woods, and impossible to see out from
anywhere inside it. Yet, as I said, so brilliant was the sunlight and so
favorable the position, of the sun at the moment of our entrance that,
after the outer dazzle had faded from inside our eyes, we could make out
the form and size of this rocky hall.

To the right of the opening where the outer passage expanded, around a
jutting shoulder of rock, we found a recess about three yards across and
nearly as deep, in which we felt and smelt wood-ashes and charred, half-
burnt wood. We groped among the damp charcoal, convincing ourselves that
many good-sized fires had been made there, but none recently. We stood
back and regarded this recess, which was so placed that no gleam from any
fire, however large, kindled in it, could ever show outside the cave.
Investigating the recess yet again Agathemer looked up and pointed. Above
me, I saw sky. The recess was a natural fire-place with a natural chimney
from it, opening at a considerable height above.

To the right of the fire-place recess, round another smaller shoulder of
rock, was a perfectly vertical wall of smooth stone terminating just above
our reach at an opening three yards wide or more. The top of the wall of
rock at the bottom of the opening was almost as straight as a door-sill.

At first we could descry in the walls of the cavern no other openings than
the entrance, the chimney and this opening above our reach, unless one
boosted the other up. From under it we went all round the cave past the
fire-place and the entrance. The floor was all damp or moist, no place fit
for us to lie down to sleep and we felt along the wall opposite the fire-
place, where the light was too dim to see at all. After feeling for some
yards we emerged or came round into a less dusky space, where we could see
to some extent and so on along the back wall of the cave opposite the
entrance, later groping along the wall, when the light failed.

Some forty to forty-five yards from the entrance, at the far end of this
extensive grotto, we came upon a passage, two or three yards wide and
about as high, leading further back into the bowels of the mountain. We
groped into it a few steps, but it sloped sharply downward and was wet, so
we retreated out of it, it being also pitch dark.

Returning along the other side of the cavern towards the fire-place we
came upon a narrow opening, less than a yard wide and not much over a yard
high. It led into a passage which sloped upwards and was free from
moisture. Agathemer was for exploring it. I remonstrated. He insisted.
After some expostulation I bade him stand at the opening, which was out of
sight of the gleam of daylight at the entrance, being behind a big
shoulder of rock further in than the fire-place. While he stood as I told
him I went out towards the middle of the cavern floor till I could see the
fireplace, though very dimly, and the entrance, quite clearly, by the
mellow glow at it from the outer sunshine reflected along the walls of the
twice bent entrance-passage.

When I had reached a position from which I could certainly see the
entrance and from which, as Agathemer told me, I could be seen by him, I
told him I would stay there while he explored the little passage into the
side of the cavern. I adjured him to be cautious and not venture himself
recklessly in the pitch dark. He declared he could feel his way safely
some distance and be sure of returning. Then he crawled into the narrow
opening.

Before I had waited long enough to grow impatient, I heard him call:

"Why, I can see you!"

The voice came not from the direction of the opening into which he had
crawled, but from near the fire-place.

"Where are you?" I called back.

"Over here," said he, "come towards me."

Advancing towards the voice and peering into the dimness, where the light
dispersed from the entrance made the darkness of the cavern just a little
less dark than blackness, I saw him standing on the sill, as it were, of
the opening up in the wall, beyond the fire-place as one approached from
the entrance, and above the vertical wall of rock.

He had found a passage just big enough to crawl through leading from the
aperture up to this species of gallery-alcove. The passage curved and was
not much over twenty yards long. He pulled me up to the gallery and we
crawled back together out of the aperture by which he had entered the
passage. The whole passage was dry, unlike the floor of the cave.

"I tell you what we ought to do," said Agathemer, "let us go outside and
gather armfuls of small leafy boughs and twigs. These we can throw up into
that gallery-opening and make a fine bed there where it is dry. Then we
can get a good safe sleep, and we need a long sound sleep."

We did as he suggested till we had leaves enough for a good bed. Then we
ate, sparingly, for we had not much food in our wallets. After eating we
wrapped ourselves in our cloaks and went to sleep; Agathemer with his
wallet beside him and his head on his arm, I with my wallet under my head.

I wakened with a hand over my mouth and with Agathemer's voice in my ear
saying:

"Keep still! Lie still! Don't move or speak! Lie still!"

He spoke in a tense whisper, so low that I could hardly understand him
with his mouth against my ear, so full of terror that the tone of it
startled me wide awake.

My first impression was of a glaring orange light on the roof of the
cavern and a diffused reflection of it or from it on the roof of our
gallery-alcove.

"Keep your head down!" Agathemer whispered. "If you turn over, turn over
quietly."

I did turn over, very slowly, a muscle at a time and with great
precautions to avoid rustling the leaves or twigs of the bed on which we
lay.

As soon as I turned over I perceived that a good, big fire must be burning
on the fire-place and that the light on the cavern roof was the direct
glare from that, while the subdued glow on the roof of our alcove was the
light reflected from the farther wall of the cavern or from its roof.

As our alcove was separated from the fire by a jutting pillar of rock, no
direct light from the fire fell on its opening; it and we were well in the
shadow. So shadowed we could hunch ourselves forward as far as we dared
and peer down into the cave.

Its floor was littered with wallets, blankets, staffs and other foot-
farers' gear. About it sat groups of men, every one with a sheath-knife or
dagger in his belt. I counted forty and there were more out of sight round
the shoulder of rock between our alcove and the fire-place.

We smelt flesh roasting or boiling. The squatting groups seemed busy with
preparations for a meal.

The men, except one lad like a shepherd, did not look Italian. Some struck
me as Spanish, others as Gallic, one or two as runaway slaves of mongrel
ancestry. Nearly all of them had the unmistakable carriage and bearing of
soldiers, even specifically of soldiers of out-of-the-way garrisons, in
the mountains or on frontiers. Yet their behavior was tin-soldierly. I
judged them discharged campaigners with an admixture of deserters and
outlaws. They all had travellers' umbrella hats, and all had thrown them
off; their cloaks were coarse and rough, many torn, but none patched,
their tunics similar; their boots of Gallic fashion, coming up nearly to
the knee, like Sicilian hunting-boots. They were all black-haired and
shock-headed, all swarthy, and most of them of medium height and solidly
built. They did not talk loud and they all talked at once, so that we made
out little of what was said and nothing informing.

I could not but remark that, although the weather was exceedingly hot and
the fire seemed large, it made no difference whatever in the feeling of
the very slightly damp, gratefully cool and evenly mild air of the cavern.

Presently the food was ready and was distributed: goat's-flesh, roasted or
broiled, some sort of coarse bread or quickly-made cakes, wine aplenty,
olives and figs. While they ate most of them sat in groups; some stood by
twos or threes; a few stood singly. From their looks, attitudes, the
direction in which they faced and other indications, we inferred that
their chief was seated to the right of the fire, between it and us, with
his back to the pillar of rock and just out of sight of us around it. Some
appeared to be standing in a half-circle before him, listening to him, or
conversing with him. A few of the men ate alone, sitting, standing or
walking about.

One of these, munching a while as he strolled back and forth, came and
took his stand behind and outside of the respectful half circle, standing
facing the fire. When he finished eating and his face quieted as he stood
there silent, gazing at something out of our sight, all at once,
simultaneously, I gripped Agathemer and he gripped me. The fellow was
Caulonius Pelops, two years before secretary to the overseer of my uncle's
estate near Consentia in Bruttium. He had run away not long before my
uncle's death.

I stared at him, revolving in my mind the difference of the attitude of
mind towards runaway slaves of a former master who catches sight of a
runaway from his estates and of the same being while pretending himself to
be a runaway. I could have laughed out loud at the contrast between the
feelings towards Pelops which I felt surge up in me and the feelings I
hoped for towards me, say in Tarrutenus Spinellus.

Pelops, of course, knew me perfectly, knew Agathemer as well, would
recognize either of us at sight. Therefore, if we were now discovered, we
saw lost all that we had thought to gain and thought we had gained by our
crawl through the drain pipe and the other features of our escape up to
now. If Pelops set eyes on me, he, at least, would know that I was yet
alive, he might tell all the band; if he told them, any one of them, even
if not he himself, might inform the authorities and put new life into the
search for me, if it had not been abandoned, or revive it if it had; put
every spy in Italy on the alert to catch me: or even betray me to the
nearest magistrate.

And Pelops had always disliked me and had always envied and hated
Agathemer. We were keyed up with anxiety.

Just as we recognized Pelops a tall, red-headed, sandy lout, with a long
neck and a prominent gullet-knot, came forward into sight from the
direction of the entrance, apparently from beyond the fire. He put up his
right hand and called, slowly and clearly:

"Eating time is over: Now we hold council!"

The men speedily assembled in curving rows facing the fire and sat or
stood as they pleased, all facing where we inferred that their leader sat,
to the right of the fire-place out of our sight round the bulge of the
shoulder of rock.

Between them and the fire, just far enough from it for him to be visible
to us, a burly shock-headed, black-haired southern Gaul took his stand.

Then we clearly heard a voice, which we inferred must be the leader's, a
voice distinct and far-carrying, but a voice amazingly soft, mild and
gentle, say:

"Council is called. Let all other men be silent. Caburus is to speak."

The burly Gaul began blusteringly, with a strong southern Gallic accent
like a Tolosan:

"It is no use, Maternus, trying to bamboozle us with your everlasting
serenity. We decline to be fooled any longer. Somehow, by sorcery or
magic, you infused into us the greatest enthusiasm for your crazy project.
You've dragged us over the Alps and into these Apennines. On the way we've
talked matters over among ourselves. The nearer we get to Rome the crazier
our errand seems. We have made fools of ourselves under your leadership
long enough. We go no further.

"We admit that Commodus ought to be killed; we admit that, if he were
killed, it would be a good thing for all Gaul and for Spain and Britain,
too, and, we suppose, for Italy and all the provinces. We also admit that
it would be a fine thing for us if we could kill Commodus, avoid getting
killed or caught ourselves, and win the rewards we could properly hope for
from the next Emperor, and the glory we'd have at home as successful
heroes.

"But, when free from the spell of your eloquence, we see no chance of
killing the Emperor and surviving to reap the reward of our prowess: none
of surviving: not even any of killing him. You say you have a perfect and
infallible plan which you will reveal when the time comes. You may have a
plan and it may be infallible and as certain of success as the sun is
certain of rising tomorrow and the day after. But we have followed you and
your secret plan long enough. We follow no further unless we know what
plan we are expected to take part in. We have all agreed to that and we
all stick to that."

And the assemblage chorused:

"We have all agreed to that and we all stick to that."

Now, from, where we peered down from our hiding-place Maternus was
entirely out of sight. We could not see what attitude he took nor what
expression his face wore. Yet, by the flickering light of the leaping
fire, which flooded the cavern with its ruddy glare, we could plainly see
the effect of his personality on the assemblage. Even as their shouts of
assent to what Caburus had said still rang through the cave I could see
them half fawning, half cringing towards their chief.

Yet his voice, when he spoke, was not harsh or domineering, but, while
perfectly audible, as bland and placid as a girl's.

"Please remember," he said, "that a plan such as I have conceived, while
it is, if carried out as designed, as certain of success as the swoop of
the hawk upon the hare, is certain of success only while it is not only
undreamed of by its object but totally unsuspected by anyone outside of
our band. The success of our project depends on no one having any inkling
of any such project, far less having an inkling of what kind of a project
it is.

"For your sakes and for your sakes only have I kept the details of my
plans locked in my own bosom. You are venturing your lives to help me to
the realization of my hopes of setting free the world. Your lives must not
be risked needlessly. Little will be the risk any of you will run in
carrying out my plans, so ingeniously are they conceived. But that
smallness of risk can be attained only if the nature of the project is
unknown to anyone save myself up to the latest possible moment before
putting it into effect. Every day, every hour, which elapses between the
giving of my instructions and their execution increases the danger of our
betrayal. We must have guides, we must, occasionally, induct into our
society new associates. Not one of these can be a danger to us as long as
the methods by which we are to effect our purpose is unknown except to me.
I propose no loitering in Rome. I mean to arrive at the right spot at the
right hour, at the hour of opportunity, to strike and to vanish before
anyone save ourselves knows that the blow has been struck. Only thus can
we succeed, only thus can we escape. Upon my silence our success depends.
Once I speak, every day, every hour makes it more likely that someone will
betray to some outsider the nature of our plot or even its details. Then
we shall certainly fail and perish."

Thereupon ensued a long wrangle in which Caburus repeated that Maternus
had said all that before and Maternus repeated the same argument in other
words and brought up other similar arguments. The crowd, while swayed by
Maternus, appeared to lean more and more to the opinions of Caburus. It
became manifest that they would break away and disperse unless Maternus
revealed his intentions. He was, apparently, quick to sense the situation
and finally yielded.

"I have three separate plans," he said, "and I mean to prepare to use all
three, so that, if the first fails the second may succeed; if both the
first and second fail I may hope to succeed with the third.

"I mean to reach Rome two days before the Festival of Cybele and for all
of us to get a sound night's sleep. Then, on the eve of the great day,
most of you may wander about the city sight-seeing; Caburus and I and a
few with us will buy or hire costumes for the Festival.

"As we have all heard, the wildest license in costumes is permitted on the
day of the celebration. Everybody dresses up as extravagantly as possible.
More than that it is so customary for jokers to dress up in burlesque of
notables that such assumptions of the costumes of officials are merely
laughed at and the wearers of them are never arrested or even reprimanded.

"Caburus and I will buy at old-clothing shops or hire from costumers cast
off uniforms of the privates of the Praetorian Guard. Two squads of us,
all volunteers and approved as boldest, strongest and quickest, will dress
up as Praetorians. One will be led by Caburus and I myself shall lead the
other.

"Caburus and his men will mingle with the crowd along the line of the
morning procession. The procession is so long, its route is so jammed with
sight-seeing rabble, the rabble is permitted so close to the line of the
procession, so many wonders and marvels form part of the procession, there
is so much interest in gazing at them, that it is possible that Caburus
may see a chance to achieve our object. I shall leave it to him whether to
give whatever signal he may agree on with his men, or to withhold it. If
he sees an opportunity, that will mean that, in his judgment, there is a
good chance of killing the tyrant and getting away unrecognized. You know
how cautious Caburus is: you will run no risk if he does not give the
signal and little if he does.

"Now, Caburus, what do you think of this plan?"

Not being able to watch Maternus making his speech, I, while straining my
ears to catch his softly uttered words, had kept my eyes on Caburus, had
marvelled to see the dogged spirit of opposition and surly disaffection
fade out of his expression, to see interest and excitement take their
place.

"I think," he shouted, "that you are a marvel! I don't wonder that you
wanted to conceal this plan till the last possible moment. It is so good
that I already want to tell it to somebody, just to see his amazement. But
we'll keep your secret! And as to your plan, I'll risk it. No Gaul with a
drop of sporting blood in his veins would hesitate to embrace the
opportunity to try to carry out so ingenious, so promising a plan.

"And you don't need a second plan or third plan. This plan, under my
leadership, is certain to succeed."

At this a scrawny, tow-headed, long-armed, long-legged fellow sprang to
his feet.

"I don't agree with that at all," he vociferated.

"Just because the first plan pleases Caburus is no reason why we should
not hear the other two plans also."

This utterance started a long discussion, from which Agathemer and I
learned nothing except that there was much insubordination among the men
following Maternus and that the scrawny objector was named Torix.

The upshot of the discussion was a general agreement that Maternus ought
to disclose all three plans.

Maternus then resumed:

"The second plan is already known to Cossedo and it need not be known to
anyone else, as he alone is concerned and he, if Caburus decides not to
make his attempt, will attempt his alone, without any assistance from
anyone and without endangering anyone else; in fact without endangering
himself. I myself thought of this plan, which is so ingenious that, if it
succeeds, no one will ever know how Commodus came to his death; it if
fails no one will ever suspect that it was tried at all.

"You have all been wondering how Cossedo came to be with us. Many of you
have jeered him; many of you have protested to me. But I know what I am
doing. Cossedo can do other things besides walk the tight-rope, juggle
five balls at once, and stand on his head on the back of a galloping
horse. He is just the right man to carry out my idea, which neither I nor
any other of us could put into effect. As Cossedo approves the plan; as he
is to try it alone, no one else need know it."

"Just so," cried the red-headed lout who had heralded the council, coming
forward into the fire-light. "I can try it and I may do it. If I do it,
Commodus will be a corpse. If I fail, no one will know I have tried. And
it is a jewel of a plan."

And he stood on his hands, feet waggling in the air, apparently from mere
exuberance of spirits. Standing up again, he threw three flip-flops
forward, then two backward, then turned a half a dozen cart wheels, during
which gyrations he passed out of our field of view.

Torix sulkily agreed that the second plan remain unknown except to
Maternus and Cossedo, the assemblage not supporting him when he pressed
for its disclosure. But he was insistent about the third plan.

"The third plan," said Maternus, "is merely the first plan over again,
except that I lead instead of Caburus and that we try after dark instead
of by day. From all I can hear the opportunity will be even better by
torchlight in the gardens about the temple than it will be by day in the
jammed streets. I mean to be as cautious as I expect Caburus to be: there
is no use making an attempt unless a really promising chance presents
itself. If I see an opening I'll kill the monster myself, and I do not
expect to need any help from anybody, except a little jostling in the
crowd to increase the confusion. As rigged up in Praetorian uniforms we
will be laughed at and indulged. Either in the noonday swelter or in the
torchlit darkness it ought to be easy to pass from aping, mimicking and
burlesquing Praetorians to personating and counterfeiting Praetorians.
Once mistaken for real guards we ought to be able to get close to
Commodus. Then in the torchlight it should be easy for me to finish him
and for you others to escape. I shall not think of escape until the deed
is done. Then I'll escape, if I can, but I shall let no thought of escape
interfere with my doing what I purpose."

This speech was acclaimed by everyone except Torix. He said:

"All this is most ingenious. But there is in this plan one flaw which no
one has noted. I suppose that you, Maternus, evolved this really promising
idea from pondering on what Claudius told us. All the hearsay about Rome
and its festivals which ever came to the ears of all of us put together is
as nothing at all compared with what Claudius told us in two months.
Claudius had lived in Rome, Claudius knew every alley in Rome. With
Claudius to pilot us we might have hoped to succeed. But Claudius is dead,
dead somewhere in the Alps, where he is no use to us. He had seen the
Emperor, he knew him by sight. Not one of us does. And, as Claudius told
us, at the Festival of Cybele, as at several other religious festivals,
the Emperor does not wear his official robes, so that anyone may recognize
him, but appears in the garb of a priest of the deity celebrated, as High
Priest or Assistant High Priest, or as a dignitary of some other degree,
the rank in the hierarchy varying with the deity worshipped.

"Now not one of us, who have never set eyes on him, can tell Commodus, in
the garb of a priest of Cybele, from any other priest of Cybele. We have
no reasonable assurance of recognizing the mark at which we aim. Thus we
have only a small chance of success, by sunlight or torchlight."

This utterance started another wrangle; the men, apparently, about equally
divided as backers of Maternus and of Torix. As I lay listening to this
hubbub someone stepped on the calf of my leg, his foot slipped off of it,
and he fell on top of me, with a smothered exclamation.

"Who are you?" he demanded, adding some words which I did not catch. It
seemed that another man was occupied similarly with Agathemer.  The man
who had fallen on me, in the act of scrambling up, yelled out:

"Here are two men lying and listening and they do not seem to belong to
us. They do not respond to the pass-word."

At that every voice stilled and every face turned to our alcove-balcony
where our captors, now four, gripped us and had lifted us to our knees.

"Throw 'em down!" came a chorus of voices, "throw 'em down!"

Down we were thrown, none too tenderly, but we landed without breaking any
bones.

Two men clutched each of us and haled us towards the fire. There we had
our first glimpse of Maternus, who sat on a pack, his back against the
rock, not too close to the fire, the light of which played on his left
cheek.

He looked plump and lazy.

"Strip them," he commanded.

As he was being obeyed somebody did something to the fire which increased
the light it gave.

"Turn them round," Maternus commanded. "Humph," he commented, "by their
faces they are a Roman gentleman and his Greek secretary; by their backs
they are fugitive slaves with bad records."

"They are both branded," added Torix, who had been inspecting us.

"Where?" queried Maternus. "I don't see any brand marks."

"On the left shoulder, each of them," Torix replied.

"Humph!" Maternus commented, "rascally slaves and indulgent master, or
canny owner of valuable, if restive, property."

Just as he said this there was a yell at our left and Caulonius Pelops
rushed in from somewhere beyond the firelight, probably from outside the
cave.

"Here's the solution of our dilemma," he cried. "We are all right now.
We've two men who know Commodus by sight. This is Andivius Hedulio, my
former master's nephew, and the other is his secretary, Agathemer."

"What, in the name of Mithras," Maternus breathed, "is your master's
nephew doing in a cave in the Apennines, with his back all scourge-marks
and a runaway-slave brand on his shoulder?"

Then ensued a long series of questions and answers, in the course of which
Agathemer and I pretty well told our story.

Maternus asked the assemblage whether they believed us and the consensus
was that they believed us and Pelops, who reminded them that Claudius had
read to them lists of those involved in conspiracies, who had been
executed or banished and their properties confiscated; that my name had
been among those he read; and that he, Pelops, had then told about me; all
of which most of them did not recollect at all, and the few who claimed to
recollect it recollected only vaguely.

Maternus, in his mild way, suggested that we would make valuable additions
to their association. Torix opposed the idea, but Maternus pointed out
that no one of them had as much to gain by the Emperor's death as I had:
that after it I might hope to be restored to my rank and wealth, and that,
after my miseries, I ought to hate Commodus more viciously than any of
them. The assemblage approved, and, while throat-cutting was not
mentioned, as that was the obvious alternative, Agathemer and I took oath
as brothers in the confraternity.

Upon this we were released and our wallets, cloaks, hats and staffs, which
had been deposited before Maternus, were restored to us. But Maternus
informed us that no member of the band was allowed any money of his own.
We must give up to him any coins we had.

Agathemer spread his cloak, spread mine on it, and upon it I emptied my
wallet, that all might see its contents. I was allowed to retain
everything, except the denarii. Agathemer did the like, with the like
result. But at the sight of his flageolet there were exclamations and
questions. He kept it out when he repacked his belongings, only giving the
coins to Maternus. After we had fed he played tunes on it, to the delight
of the whole band. It seemed to me they would never let him stop playing
that flageolet and I was desperately drowsy.

At last all were for sleep. Maternus decreed that Agathemer and I might
climb up again on the dry shelf where we had been found. Neither he nor
any of the band seemed to object to, or indeed to notice, the dampness of
the cave floor.

Agathemer and I slept at once. Our precious amulet-bags, of course, had
not been investigated, or so much as suspected, and were safe on our neck-
thongs.




CHAPTER XVII

THE FESTIVAL


Thus most strangely, and through no fault of mine, I found myself a full
fledged formally sworn member of a conspiracy against the life of
Commodus.

Maternus, whether from innate considerateness or because it happened to
coincide with his plans, let us have our sleep out and wake naturally. We
woke hungry and fed with the whole band, totalling forty-nine with
ourselves, according to my count and to the statement of Pelops. He was
most absurdly, but naturally, more than a little shy and bashful at
finding himself in a position of complete equality with me. As we ate he
narrated his reasons for running away and how he had escaped to Clampetia,
from there on a fishing-boat to Sarcapus in Sardinia, and from there on a
trading ship to Marseilles. There he had attached himself to a slave-
dealer and with him had travelled to Tolosa and Narbo, where he had gotten
into trouble and had fled to the mountains. There he had joined some
outlaws, who had joined Maternus.

The fellows who had found me and Agathemer told cheerfully how the
shepherd lad, their local guide, who knew nothing of them except that they
were accepted associates of some local mountain brigands, had been showing
them the inner passages of the cave, into which Agathemer and I had not
ventured, and, on their return, had proposed to lead them up the side-
passage to the outlook-opening. There they had trodden on us and so
captured us.

After eating we set out on our way southwards to Rome.

On the march, inevitably, I became acquainted with Maternus and marvelled
at that most amazing man. I had heard of him, of course, for his exploits
as mutineer, outlaw, insurgent and rebel had made him notorious, not only
in Spain and Gaul, but in Italy, even among the circles of society amid
which I moved by inheritance. His reputation for strength, vigor, valor,
resolution, ruthlessness, ferocity and cunning had made me picture him as
different as possible from what he really was.

He was neither tall nor burly and nothing about him gave any hint of the
great strength for which he was reputed and which, on occasion, I have
seen him exert. Only one man of the band was shorter than Maternus and no
other looked so much the reverse of hard and tough.

Maternus, in fact, looked soft. His very outline was plump, his feet and
hands small, his toes and fingers delicate. He was not a handsome man, but
he was by no means ill-looking and in some respects was almost boyish, or
even girlish. He had glossy, straight brown hair, soft brown eyes, a
complexion almost infantile in its rosy freshness, and all his features
were small, his ears close to his head, his mouth even tiny, his nose
likewise: and withal, Maternus was habitually mild, serene of expression,
slow and soft of speech, and deliberate in all his movements. I never
heard him raise his voice or speak or act hurriedly or urgently.

Of course, I had been dumbfounded to find him in Italy and in the
Apennines when everybody supposed him a hunted fugitive, hiding in the
Pyrenees or the Cevennes; or even, perhaps, in the wilds of North Spain.
Still more was I amazed at the boldness of a man who could conceive such
plans for assassinating the Prince of our Republic and could feel serenely
confident of being able to execute them.

He was perfectly open with me. He had been a worshipper and adorer of
Aurelius. If Aurelius had lived to a reasonable old age, he averred, the
Republic would have been firmly established, the Empire solidified, the
administration purified and the frontiers defended. Everything that had
happened in the past five years he blamed on Commodus. It was the
indifference of Commodus which had ruined the administration of the army,
so that incompetent, dishonest, and tyrannical under-officers drove young
patriots like himself into mutiny, outlawry and their consequences. Had
Commodus been a capable ruler he and his fellow malcontents would have
been listened to, placated and sent off, aflame with patriotic enthusiasm
and bent on redeeming their past records, to hurl back from the hardest-
pressed part of our frontiers the most dangerous foes of the Republic.
Upon Commodus he blamed his mutiny, all the atrocities he had committed in
the course of his insurrections, and all the blood he had shed, as well as
all the towns he had sacked and burnt in the course of his raids; also on
Commodus he blamed the destruction of his army of insurgents.

He freely discussed with me his plans for assassinating Commodus. I could
not deny that they were brilliantly conceived.

Almost equally brilliant I thought his management of his expedition. From
where I joined it, near the crest of the Apennines, somewhere between the
head-waters of the Trebia and the Nura, we advanced on Rome as rapidly as
footfarers could travel. In the Ligurian Apennines, until we had crossed
the upper tributaries of the Tarus, the Macra and the Auser, and were
between Luna and Pistoria, we travelled all together, tramping all night
in single file after a guide and sleeping all day in well hidden camps.
Everywhere we were well fed. Nowhere did we lose our way or meet anyone
not forewarned and friendly. It was as if the highwaymen, brigands and
outlaws of the whole Empire had formed an association, so that any of them
could travel secretly anywhere by the help of those of the regions which
they crossed. We advanced as if swift and reliable runners had preceded
us, advised of our approach the outlaws of each district and they had
prepared to entertain us and to forward us on our way.

From somewhere between Pistoria and Luca we broke up into small parties of
three to seven, and travelled by day like ordinary wayfarers. Somewhere
not far south of the Arnus we reassembled, evidently by prearrangement and
as accurately as a well-managed military-expedition. Through the
mountains past Arretium we marched at night as in the Apennines. Again
somewhere to the west of Clusium, before we reached the Pallia, we again
dispersed. We struck the Clodian Highway about halfway between Clusium and
the Pallia. From there we proceeded like ordinary footfarers.

Both between Pistoria and Arretium, along the byroads, and from the Pallia
to Rome, on the Clodian Highway, I was in the party headed by Maternus
himself, a party of five besides us two. When we dispersed near Luca I had
noted that Torix, Pelops and Cossedo with two more made a party; and that
Caburus took Agathemer with him.

As Maternus had been open with me about his past and his plans so he was
perfectly frank about his attitude towards me.

"I assume," he said, "that you are delighted at the opportunity which
chance and I have given you to assist in revenging yourself on Commodus. I
similarly assume that you and Agathemer would keep any oath taken by you.
But prudence compels a leader like me to take no chances. I must, as a
wary guardian of my associates, take all possible precautions. You will
understand."

We did understand. We were watched as if he assumed that we were on the
alert for a chance of escape, as we were. On night marches a leathern
thong was knotted about my waist and the ends knotted similarly about the
waists of the man before me and the man behind me. Agathemer was made
secure in a like fashion. When he lay down to sleep, after he had composed
himself to rest, a blanket was spread over him and a burly ruffian lay
down on either side of him, the edges of the blanket under them. I slept
similarly guarded. On day marches Caburus kept Agathemer close to him; I
was never out of sight of Maternus.

Somewhere in the Etrurian hills north of Arretium I overheard part of a
conversation between Maternus and Caburus. They were talking of me and
Agathemer.

"You cannot be sure," said Maternus. "By every rule of reason Hedulio
ought to hate Commodus consumedly. But loyalty is so inbred in senators
and men of equestrian rank, in all the Roman nobility, that he may have a
soft place in his heart for him, after all. Instead of doing his best to
help us kill him he might try to shield him, at a pinch."

"Just what I have been thinking," said Caburus. "I am half in doubt about
this enterprise, even now. Agathemer may after all, try to fool me and to
shield Commodus, by pointing out some other man to me, at the crucial
moment."

"If you suspect him of anything of the kind," said Maternus gently, "just
drive your dirk good and far into him and be done with him. I'll be on the
lookout for any hanky-panky from Hedulio. If I see the wrong look in his
eye or the wrong expression on his face I'll make a quick end of him. I'll
tolerate no treachery after oath given and oath taken."

It may easily be imagined how nervous and uncomfortable I felt after
hearing this mild, soft-voiced utterance.

My anxiety was accentuated within an hour. Just as I, like the other
members of the band, was composing myself to sleep, I heard high words,
raised voices, threats, an oath and a yell. With the rest I rushed towards
the sounds. There, with the rest, I saw Caulonius Pelops in the agonies of
death, a dagger in his heart. One of our Spanish associates had
momentarily lost his temper.

Maternus, calm and unruffled, mildly inquired the causes of the quarrel,
affirmed his belief in the Spaniard's account, absolved him of all blame
and ordered Pelops buried. Then, as if nothing happened, we all composed
ourselves to sleep.

I did not sleep much. Evidently, stabbing on small provocation was taken
as a matter of course among my present comrades.

At Vulsinii we had a sound sleep at an inn and a bountiful meal at dawn.
We needed both before dark, for Maternus marched us the entire twenty-
eight miles to Forum Cassii by sunset. I was in as hard condition as any
of his band and I stood the long tramp well. Next day we paused for barely
an hour, near noon, at Sutrium, and made the twenty-three miles to
Baccanae easily. The third day we even more easily made the twenty-one
from Baccanae to Rome. Rome, naturally, I approached with emotion. I had
gazed back on it from the road to Tibur, certain that I should never again
behold it. And I was now about to enter it under most amazing
circumstances, as the associate of cutthroats and ruffians, as a sworn
member of a conspiracy to assassinate the Prince of the Republic, as the
prisoner of a ruthless outlaw, as a suspected associate of a chieftain who
might stab me at the slightest false action, motion, word, tone or look.

There is, I think, no view of Rome as one approaches it along the Via
Clodia or the Via Flaminia which is as fine as anyone of a score from
points on the Via Salaria and Via Tiburtina. But, on a clear, mild, mellow
summer afternoon I caught glorious glimpses of the city from the higher
points of the road as we neared it. The sight moved me to tears, tears
which I was careful to conceal. I could not but note the fulfillment of
the prophecy made by the Aemilian Sibyl. I could not but hope that I might
survive to see Rome under happier circumstances.

Amid manifold dangers as I was, I was not gloomy. We entered the city by
the Flaminian Gate, of course, and, in the waning light, walked boldly the
whole length of the Via Lata, diagonally across from the Forum of Trajan,
under his Triumphal Arch, through the Forum of Augustus, and across, the
Forum of Nerva past the Temple of Minerva and so to the Subura. All the
way from the City Gate to the slum district I marvelled at Maternus: he
never asked his way, took every turn correctly; and, amid the splendors of
Trajan's Forum, behaved like a frequenter, habituated to such
magnificence. Equally did he seem at home amid such crowds as he could
never have mingled with. He comported himself so as to attract no remark.

As we passed the Temple of Minerva I sighed and remarked that I would give
anything short of life itself for a bath.

"You need not give that much; we can bathe for a _quadrans_, and, since
you mention it, we shall all be better for a bath."

"There is no reason why you and the rest should not bathe," I rejoined,
ruefully, "but with my back and shoulder a bath is no place for me."

"Pooh!" laughed Maternus, "you grew up in Rome and I never set foot in it
till today, yet you know no bath you dare enter, while I can lead you to a
bath-house where no one will heed or notice brand-marks or scourge-sears."

It was, in fact, close by and I had the first vapor bath I had enjoyed
since leaving Villa Spinella. After we left the bath Maternus bought three
cheap little terra-cotta lamps and a small supply of oil.

At the cheaper sort of cook-shop we ate a hearty meal, with plenty of very
bad wine. Then we went where, manifestly, arrangements had been made for
our lodging, in a seven-story rookery, such as I had never entered and had
hardly seen from outside. Its entrance was from the Subura and opened near
the middle of one of the long sides of the courtyard, the pavement of
which was very uneven from irregular sinking and its many shaped stones
much worn. Out in it, at almost equal distances from the ends, the sides
and each other, stood two circular curb-walls, each about a yard high; one
the well, whence was drawn all the water used by the inmates; the other
the sewer-opening, down which went all manner of refuge. The ascent to the
upper stories was by an open stone stair in one corner of the court. All
round the court was an open arcaded corridor, running behind the stair in
its corner. Above it were six similar arcaded galleries, one for each
upper floor. The rooms, judging from those into which I looked through
open doors, appeared all alike. Ours were floored, walled and roofed with
coarse cement, full of small broken stone, and not very smoothly finished.
The floors were worn smooth by long use. The only opening to each was the
door, over which was a latticed window reaching to the vaulted ceilings of
the gallery and room.

Our rooms were on the fourth floor. There were three rooms, each with
three canvas cots. Maternus left the six others to dispose themselves as
they pleased. He and I took the middle room. Quite as a matter of course
he bolted he door, drew his cot across it, and as soon as I had composed
myself to sleep, sat on his cot and blew out the little terra-cotta lamp.

Next morning he quite unaffectedly discussed with me what he was to do
with me.

"In Rome, anywhere in Rome," he said, "you are likely to be recognized any
moment. I took the risk yesterday evening; I had to, I never attempt
impossibilities or worry over manifest necessities. But I never run
unnecessary risks. The natural thing to do with you is to leave you in
this room all day with two of my lads to watch you. I do not want to
irritate you, but I see no other way."

"I'll agree to come back here and stay here quietly," I said, "if you will
let me go out first for a while with you or any man or men you choose. I
want to go to the Temple of Mercury and I want you to give me back enough
of my money to buy two white hens to offer to the god."

"You surprise me," he said. "I shouldn't have expected a man of your
origin to pay particular attention to gaining the favor of Mercury. He is
more in the line of men like me. I am first and always devoted to Mithras,
of course. But Mercury comes high up on my list. I've a mind to take the
risk, go with you and buy four hens, two for you and two for me."

Actually we went out together shortly after sunrise, down the Subura,
through Nerva's Forum, and diagonally across the Forum itself. There I
quaked, for fear of being recognized; and marvelled at the coolness of
Maternus. He feasted his eyes and mind on the gorgeousness about us, but
with such discretion that no one could have conjectured that he was a
foreigner, viewing Rome for the first time.

On down the Vicus Tuscus we went into the meat market, where he bought
four plump, young, white hens. As we started on with them, each of us
carrying two, he asked his first question.

"What building is that?" nodding.

"The Temple of Hercules," I told him.

"I thought so," he said, "they always build his circular. We'll stop in
there on our way back. I never miss a chance to ask his help."

Whereas, when I made my offering before my flight the previous year, the
street had been deserted, since I passed along it within an hour after
sunrise, now it was humming with unsavory life, the eating-stalls under
the vaults crowded, throngs about the Babylonian and Egyptian seers who
prophesied anyone's future for a copper, tawdry hussies leering before the
doors of their dens, unsavory louts chatting with some of them, idlers
everywhere. This festering cess-pool of humanity Maternus regarded with
disdain and contempt manifest to me, but carefully concealed behind a
bland expression.

When we came out of the Temple of Mercury, after making our offering,
Maternus whispered:

"Walk very much at ease and as if your mind were as much as possible at
peace; two men opposite are watching us."

I assumed my most indifferent air and carefully avoided looking across the
street, except for one cautious glance from the lowest step of the Temple.
Then I glimpsed, leaning against a pier of the outer arcade of the Circus
Maximus, two men wrapped in dingy cloaks, for the morning had been cool.
After we were in the Temple of Hercules, Maternus asked:

"Did you recognize them?"

"One I had never seen," I replied. "The other I have seen before, but I do
not know who he is nor where I have seen him."

Not until after midnight that night did it suddenly pop into my head that
he was the same man whom I had first seen on horseback in the rain on the
crossroad above Vediamnum, the man whom Tanno had asserted was a
professional informer and accredited Imperial spy, the man who had glanced
into Nemestronia's garden and seen me with Egnatius Capito.

After we left the Temple of Hercules I expected him to conduct me back to
our lodgings for the day. He never suggested it, but kept me with him,
strolling about the central parts of the city as if he had nothing to
fear, walking all round the Colosseum and loitering through the Vicus
Cyprius, frankly amused at the sights we saw there.

He had no difficulty in finding shops of costumers: on the eve of the
Festival they displayed placards calling attention to their wares. The
first we entered had no Praetorian uniforms; but, as if the request for
them were a matter of course, its proprietor directed us to the shop of a
cousin of his who made a specialty of them. There I was amazed that such
laxity of law, or of enforcement of law, could possibly exist as would
permit such a trade. There was evidently a regular manufacture for this
festival of costumes simulating and travestying those of the Imperial Body
Guard. We were shown scores of them and the shop had them in a great pile.

The tunics were genuine tunics formerly worn by the actual Praetorian
Guards but discarded and sold as worn or faded. There were also many such
kilts and corselets and helmets. But as helmets, corselets and even kilts
wore out or lost their freshness more slowly than tunics, there were many
imitation kilts and corselets of sheepskin painted, and many cheap, light
helmets of willow-wood, covered with dogskin. But all these had genuine
plumes, as cast-off plumes were even more plentiful than second-hand
tunics.

As there was a strict enforcement of the law forbidding the sale,
transport, storage or possession of the weapons of any part of the
military establishment the shields and swords which went with the costumes
were all imitations; flimsy, but astonishingly deceiving to the eye, even
at a short distance. The shields were of sheep-skin stretched over an
osier frame, but painted outside so as to present the appearance of the
genuine Praetorian shields. The baldricks and belts were also of sheep-
skin, the scabbards of willow-wood, and the blades of the wooden swords of
fig-wood, so as to be completely harmless.

When Maternus proposed to hire twenty-one of these suits the proprietor
took it as a customary transaction, inspected and counted twenty-one
costumes and stated the charge for hiring them until the day after the
Festival. But he also stated that he did not hire costumes except to his
regular customers; strangers must not only make a deposit but produce as
vouchers two Romans in good standing and well known. Seeing Maternus at a
stick he added, easily and at once, that he sold costumes to any purchaser
for cash, without question, and agreed to repurchase the same costumes
after the Festival at nine denarii for every ten of the sale price, if the
costumes were brought back in good condition; if damaged, he would even so
repurchase them, but only at their damaged value.

Maternus at once agreed to buy on those terms and, without haggling,
accepted the price asked and paid it in gold. He then arranged for porters
to carry the costumes where he wanted them. This also was taken as a
matter of course.

Followed by the porters we returned to our lodging. Maternus left two
porters, with their loads, in the courtyard and with the third porter we
climbed three flights of stairs. The porter bestowed his huge pack in my
cell and there Maternus left me in charge of three of the men, with orders
that two must watch me till he returned. The third was to be at my orders
to fetch any eatables or drinkables I wanted; to this man Maternus gave a
handful of carefully counted silver coins.

There I remained until next morning, sleeping all the time I could get to
sleep and stay asleep; trying not to fret when awake; and by no means
displeased with the food and wine brought me.

Maternus slept that night, as the night previous, with his cot across our
door.

Next morning he said to me:

"I feel unusually reckless today. I've been thinking the matter over and
it seems to me that, on the day of the Festival, there will be thousands
of sightseers in dingy cloaks and umbrella hats. I am of the opinion that
you will run little risk on the streets anywhere in the poorer quarters of
the city. I'm going to take you out with me to see the fun. We'll keep far
away from where Caburus and Cossedo and their helpers are to take their
stands. We'll see the morning fun and then eat a hearty meal and sleep all
the afternoon."

Out we sallied, I and one varlet in our travelling outfit, Maternus and
six more habited as imitation Praetorians. Two of the ruffians had a
pretty taste in drollery and amused the crowd with buffooneries. Strange
to say the crowds seemed to think that they travestied Praetorians to a
nicety whereas neither had ever set eyes on a Praetorian and their antics
were the product of mere innate whimsicality.

I found the procession really interesting, with its various wonders and
marvels. I had never been in Rome at the time of the Feast of Cybele,
which was, of all the Festivals of the Gods, peculiarly the poor man's
frolic. And I had always wondered how it was possible so to tame and train
two healthy full-grown male lions as to have them draw a chariot with
Demeter's statue through miles of crowded streets. After seeing them pass
I concluded that they were dazed by the glare, the crowds and the noise,
and too cowed to be dangerous.

At the license in the streets I was amazed. I saw a dozen men, each
attired as Prefect of the Palace; a score of loose women dressed in an
unmistakable imitation of the Empress, consuls by scores and similar
counterfeits of every honored official or acclaimed individual. In
particular, every corner had a laborious presentation of Murmex Lucro, the
most popular gladiator in Rome. Almost equally frequent were presentments
of Agilius Septentrio, the celebrated pantomimist; and of Palus, champion
charioteer.

And I saw, amid roars of laughter, jeers, cat-calls and plaudits, no less
than three different roisterers got up, cautiously and in inexpensive
stuffs, but recognizably, as caricatures of the Emperor himself; not, of
course, in his official robes, but in such garments as he wore in his
sporting hours. These audacious merrymakers were ignored by the police and
military guards.

Not long after noon Maternus declared that he had had enough. We ate at a
decidedly good cook-shop, where we had excellent food and good medium
wine. When I waked near sunset Maternus reported that he had slept all the
afternoon: certainly I had.

He then explained to me that he was to make his attempt in the Gardens of
Lucius Verus, where Commodus had this year decreed the torchlight
procession. He was again entirely frank.

"Your part," he said, "will be merely to point out Commodus to me. If I
decide not to make any attempt on him I shall expect you to return here
with me and abide by whatever decision our association makes at its next
meeting: I cannot foresee whether they will vote to disband or to plan
another venture. If I make my attempt, and I think I shall, for,
apparently, both Caburus and Cossedo have blenched or failed, since no
rumors of any excitement have reached us, you will be free the moment you
see me stab Commodus. You must then look out for yourself and fend for
yourself: you and I are never to meet again unless by some unimaginable
series of miracles."

And he gave me four silver pieces, saying:

"This will keep you in food for a long time, if you are sparing. Good
luck!"

Then, habited as in the morning, we sallied out, and ate at a cook-shop we
had never before entered, which was full of revellers dressed as votaries
of Isis, as Egyptians, as cut-laws, as Arabians, as anything and
everything. And as we crossed the city on our way to the Aelian Bridge,
as we were passing through a better part of it, I was struck with the
craziness of the costumes, many imitating every imaginable style of garb:
Gallic, Spanish, Moorish, Syrian, Persian, Lydian, Thracian, Scythian and
many more; but many also devised according to no style that ever existed,
but invented by the wearers, in a mad competition to don the most
fantastic and bizarre garb imagination could suggest.

In the torchlit gardens I perceived at once that it would be very easy for
Maternus to edge close to the actual bodyguard, mingle with them, pass
himself off as one, get near the Emperor and make a rush at him. He had
chosen a spot where the procession was to circle thrice about a great
statue of Cybele set up for that occasion on a temporary base in the
middle of a round grass-plot. His idea was that I was to point out
Commodus to him on the first round and he to consider the disposition of
the participants in the procession and make his attempt on the second or
third round.

Standing, as we did, in the front row of a mass of revellers packed as
spectators along the incurved outer rim of the ring, we had a surpassingly
good view of the procession as it entered the circle. There were various
bands of votaries and then six eunuch priests, their faces whitened with
flour, their garb a flowing robe of light vivid yellow, convoying a brace
of panthers, pacing as sedately as the brace of lions in the morning
procession, drawing a light chariot in which sat a diademed, robed and
garlanded image of Cybele, very gaudy and garish. Behind the chariot paced
two priests of Cybele, not Phrygian Eunuchs, but Roman officials, in their
pontifical robes, a pair of dignified old senators, ex-consuls both,
Vitrasius Pollio and Flavius Aper, full of self-importance. Then came the
Chief Priest, tall, full-bearded, swarthy, his robes a blaze of gold and
jewels, pacing solemnly, on either side of him, as assistant priest, a
young Roman nobleman, chosen from the college of the Pontiffs of Cybele,
habited in very gorgeous robes. One was Marcus Octavius Vindex, son of the
ex-consul, a very handsome young man; the other, to my amazement,
Talponius Pulto.

At sight of my life-long enemy who had always rebuffed my overtures
towards the establishment of courteous relations between us, who had
insulted me a thousand times, who had sponsored the informer whose
insinuations had caused my downfall, revengeful rage and self-
congratulation at my opportunity filled me.

For, between the two pompous old senators and this dignified, showy and
impressive trio, capered a score of eunuch priests clashing cymbals and
among them Commodus also clashing cymbals and amazingly garbed. I have
never been able to conjecture how his headgear was managed. He had a band
round his forehead and from that band rose a sphere of some light
material, apparently a framework of whalebone covered with silk, a sphere
fully a yard in diameter, all gleaming with the sheen of silk, and white
with an unsurpassable whiteness. His robe, or tunic or whatever it was,
was of the same or a similar glossy white silk. Round his neck was a
golden collar, and gold anklets of a similar pattern clanked on his
ankles. From the links or bosses of the collar to the links or bosses of
the anklets streamed silken ribbons of the same intense light yellow we
had seen in the robes of the panther-keepers. Two of the eunuch priest