trance to Villa Vedia, but I would
not give up, I took the left-hand turn and went down stream. Beyond the
first bend in the road we found ourselves approaching a long, straggling,
one-street village of tall, narrow stone houses along the eastern bank of
the little river. By the road, just before the first house, watching five
goats, was a boy, a boy with a crooked twitching face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How did you know that?" I asked.

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

"The mare was a magnificent beast, vicious as a fury, with a mouth as hard
as an eighty-pound tunny. He sat her like Castor himself. She pirouetted
back and forth across the road and my fellows sc