Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I suppose the guest-rooms are all ready, but you had best go see to that, and meanwhile turn this fellow over to Ofatulenus." Agathemer nodded. The pleasantest of his many good qualities was that whatever he might be asked to do he carried out without comment or objection. Nothing was too big or too small for him.
I told him to lock the trappings in the third locker in my harness-room, which locker I knew should be empty. I got from the stable to my villa without encountering any human being. Outside I found Agathemer, as I had hoped I would, sunning himself on the terrace. He was even more amazed than Ofatulenus and began to exclaim. I silenced him and questioned him as to his health.
About the third hour of the day, on the fifth day before the Kalends of September, of a fair, bright morning, I came to my own estate. On the road nearing it I had met no one. I met no one along the woodland tracks leading into my property from that side: on my estate I met no one save just as I was about to enter my villa. Then I encountered Ofatulenus, bailiff of the Villa Farm.
He, of course, was amazed to see me. I bade him mention to no one, not even to his wife, that I had returned home. "Be secret!" I enjoined. He nodded. I believed he would be dumb. Give me a Sabine to keep a secret; I'd back any Sabine against any other sort of human being. Ofatulenus took my horse and swore that no one outside of the stable should know it was there or suspect it.
Oddly enough, while he had closely questioned himself and my other eight tenants as to the date of my departure for Rome and as to whether they had seen me since they last saw me in Rome, and while he had questioned Uturia and Ofatulena as to whether they had seen me since I set off for Rome, he had somehow omitted or forgotten to ask Ofatulenus the same questions, so that he had been able to answer truthfully the only questions asked of him.
Agathemer, I found, had told Chryseros that only he and Ofatulenus had seen me between my return and escape. Gratillus had especially questioned the wives of my eight tenants, and as Chryseros was a widower, his widowed daughter, who lived with him. Each of these he had summoned before him separately and had interrogated alone and at length. This was like Gratillus.
Word Of The Day