s acting as goat-herds or herdsmen, who
spent the day abroad with their charges, so that we could readily enter
their deserted cabins and take what we pleased; especially as, if a dog
had been left to guard the hut, I could always master him so that he
greeted me fawning and stood wagging his tail as we made off.

Except these not very risky raids for provender and such encounters as
called for more than usually ingenious lying from Agathemer, we had no
adventures.

But we realized from day to day and more and more insistently, that we
were progressing slowly, far slower than we had anticipated. It was plain
that we could not hope to reach Aquileia before winter set in. It was
manifest that it would be unsafe to attempt to winter anywhere in the Po
valley between the mountains and Aquileia. At Ravenna, Bononia or Padua we
should be noticed, investigated and perhaps recognized: anywhere in the
open country, at any village or farm, we should, even more certainly
excite suspicion. We must winter in the mountains. But how or where?

The question was solved for us by our first considerable adventure. I
never knew the precise locality. We had, in traversing the mountains
trails, avoided any semblance of ignorance of our general locality and had
sedulously refrained from asking any questions except as to our way to
some nearby objective, generally imaginary. All I know is that we were
somewhere on the northeastern slope of the long chain of mountains beyond
Iguvium and Tifernum perhaps near the headwaters of the Sena. On the
morning of our adventure we were on a long spur of the main range, so that
we were headed not northwest but northeast. The weather was still fine and
warm, but autumn was not far off. We hadn't seen a habitation since that
at which we had passed the night, and we had made about three leagues
since we left it, following what was at first a good mountain road, but
which grew worse and worse till it became a mere trail.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LONELY HUT

Some time before noon we were threading a barely visible track not far
below the crest of the spur, a track bordered and overshadowed by
chestnuts and beeches, but chestnuts and beeches intermingled with not a
few pines and firs, when, out of the bushes on our left hand, from the up
slope above us, appeared a large mouse-colored Molossian dog, very lean
and starved looking. I first saw his big, square-jowled, short-muzzled
head peering out between s