ou
amaze me! I am Galvius Crispinillus, lately and for many a year King of
the Highwaymen! Give me your hand!"

Now, whatever distaste I felt for giving my hand to such a criminal,
however great was my repugnance, however utterly I felt myself lost,
however certain I was of the inevitable doom hanging over me, however
short a respite I anticipated before my inescapable death, I was not fool
enough to antagonize my companion in misery, presumably a powerful and
ferocious brute. I held out my hand. His grasped it. Mine returned the
grip.

"Come this way!" he said. "This pit is damp and chilly, but even here a
bed of stale straw is better than the rock floor or the patches of mud on
it or the heaps of filth. I know every inch of this hole and I know the
least uncomfortable place to sit. Come along!"

He guided me in the utter blackness to a pile of damp straw. On it we sat
down, half reclining.

"If you are thirsty," he said, "I can guide you to the well. There is a
spring in here and plenty of good water."

"I thank you," I said. "I shall be thirsty enough before long. Just now I
am far more interested to hear how you came here. Nobody believed that you
would ever be caught."

"No more did I!" he ejaculated. "I had so easily defied the utmost efforts
of the government and officials under Aurelius, of the incompetents under
Commodus, of his vaunted Highway Constabulary; had so prospered, had so
come and gone as I pleased and robbed whom I pleased from the Po to the
Straits, that I thought no man could lay for me any snare I could not
foresee, thought myself impeccably wary and prescient, though I had always
taken and would always take all necessary precautions.

"But I was a fool. I comprehended Aurelius and Commodus and their
magistrates and officials and constabulary; I was right in fearing nothing
from Pertinax and Julianus; but I was an ass to think I could cope with
Septimius Severus. That man is deeper than the deepest abyss of mid-ocean!

"I thought I was certain of months of disorder, confusion and laxity in
which I could go where I pleased, act as I pleased, garner a rich harvest
and escape unscathed. Do you know, before he had left Aquileia, perhaps
before he had passed the Alps, possibly before he had set out from
Sabaria, that man had despatched not one but a dozen detachments to
ascertain my whereabouts, consider how best to take me unawares, lie in
wait for me, nab me and hunt down my bands. I believ