Andivius Hedulio by Edward Lucas White (page 4)

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, hut 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