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Agathemer and I returned their salute as precisely as we could imitate it, thankful that they had saluted, so as to let us see what the couriers' salute was, for we had felt much anxiety all along the road, since neither of us, often as we had seen it, could recall it well enough to be sure of giving it properly, if we met genuine couriers, or, terrible thought, encountered an inspector making sure that the service was all it should be and on the outlook for irregularities.
Tanno queried. "Have you ever seen any of these little Egyptian cats which some folks have nowadays for pets?" Agathemer asked in his turn. "Creatures about as long as your forearm and rather gentle?" "Certainly," said Tanno. "I've seen a number of them at ultra-fashionable mansions of the fast set, who must have the latest novelty." "Ever see any of their kittens?" Agathemer asked.
As we skurried through the snoring camp, unperceived by the sodden sleepers, Agathemer said, aloud: "This looks increasingly bad. The Praetorians are standing with interlocked elbows; they look unpleasantly like samples of a complete cordon round the camp. The mounted Praetorians are behind them not two horse-lengths and less than that apart.
With some of these we butchered and cut up the goat. The offal we fed to Hylactor, not much at a time. Most of the rest of her we ate, a little at a time, as the frost kept the meat from spoiling. The kidneys Agathemer used first.
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.
Presently he remarked: "We are not far from what I am looking for." And he turned up a side street to our right. As we took turn after turn each street was less savory and more disreputable than the last till we were in a sort of alley populated it seemed by slatternly trulls and trollops. "This," said Agathemer, "is the quarter of the town I am after, but not quite the part of it I want."
I still mourned for Agathemer, but I did not miss him as acutely as I had in the ergastulum. After about ten days in the woodland glades I brought my charges back to the villa for inspection, according to orders. The inspector was pleased with their condition and commended me. Some of the fellow-herdsmen, off duty, stood or sat about and they seemed to approve.
One cannot invite a man without previous explanation and then, when he's already in one's house, ask him to lie down to dinner with a slave." "Slave!" Tanno roared at me, his face red as the back of a boiled lobster. If I had just missed being angry with him, there was no doubt that he was in a tearing fury with me. "Slave?" he repeated. "Agathemer still a slave? Are you joking or are you serious?
Falco and I occupied the interval vacated by Clemens and Vedia. Agathemer, of all men on earth, asked what he could do for us. Falco stood there a long time, saw a goodly fraction of the finest jewels in Orontides' possession and, manifestly, made as favorable impression of connoisseurship on Agathemer as Agathemer made on him. They eyed each other as fellow-adepts.
"No one wants to remain a slave," Agathemer confessed, "and every slave longs to be a free man and is impatient to be free at once. But I try to be resigned, of course, and, except that I cannot rejoice in not being free, I am as well fed, clothed and housed as I should be as a free man and have as much leisure." Tanno glowered at both of us.
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