admiration for so perfect a horseman, felt the like in all
the spectators.

Team after team and chariot after chariot he tried out.

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

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

I was unable to make any conjecture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have always had very definite theories of chariot construction,"
Commodus went on. "I hold that the popular makes are all bad; in fact I am
positively of the opinion that the tendencies in chariot building have
been all in the wrong direction for centuries. They have followed and
intensified the trad