rm of execution hardly troubled him; the
possible injustice of it stirred him to his depths. He felt a sort of
superstitious reverence for the victim, increased by the strange
coincidence that he had made use, without previous reflection, of
Maternus' name.

Presently he saw Norbanus riding the horse that he himself had ridden
that afternoon from Antioch to Daphne, followed on a mule by Cadmus, the
slave who had brought the letter which had pulled the trigger that set
the catapults of destiny in motion. Making a wide circuit, they helped
Scylax catch the Cappadocian.

Norbanus came cantering back. He was dressed for the road in a brown
woolen tunic contributed by some one in Pertinax' suite. He shook a bag
of money.

"Cornificia was generous," he said. "Old Pertinax thought he had done
well enough by you. She cried shame on him and threatened to send for
her jewelry. So he borrowed money from the priests. You are as dead as
that." He looked up at the tortured body of the robber. "What name
will you take? We had better begin to get used to it."

"It is written here," said Sextus, showing him the parchment. But the
moon had gone down in a smother of silvery cloud; Norbanus could not see
to read. "I am Maternus-Latro."

"I was told they had crucified that fellow."

"This is Maternus. Being dead, he will hardly grudge me the use of his
name! However, I will pay him for it. He shall have fair burial. Help
me down with him."

Norbanus beckoned to the slaves, who tied the horses to a near-by tree.
They sought in the dark for a hole that would do for a grave, since they
had no burying tools, stumbling on a limestone slab at last, that lay
amid rank weeds near a tomb hollowed out of the rock that had been
rifled, very likely, centuries ago. They lowered the already stiffened
body into it, with a coin in its fingers for Charon's ferry-fare across
the Styx, then set the heavy slab in place, all four of them using their
utmost strength.

Then Sextus, having poured a little water from his hollowed hands on to
the slab, because he had no oil, and having murmured fragments of a
ritual as old as Rome, bidding the gods of earth and air and the unseen
re-absorb into themselves what man no longer could perceive or cherish
or destroy, turned to the two slaves.

"Scylax," he said, "Cadmus--he who was your master is as dead as that
man we have buried. I am not Sextus, son of Maximus. I fare forth like
a dead man o