anded, adding some words which I did not catch. It
seemed that another man was occupied similarly with Agathemer. The man
who had fallen on me, in the act of scrambling up, yelled out:

"Here are two men lying and listening and they do not seem to belong to
us. They do not respond to the pass-word."

At that every voice stilled and every face turned to our alcove-balcony
where our captors, now four, gripped us and had lifted us to our knees.

"Throw 'em down!" came a chorus of voices, "throw 'em down!"

Down we were thrown, none too tenderly, but we landed without breaking any
bones.

Two men clutched each of us and haled us towards the fire. There we had
our first glimpse of Maternus, who sat on a pack, his back against the
rock, not too close to the fire, the light of which played on his left
cheek.

He looked plump and lazy.

"Strip them," he commanded.

As he was being obeyed somebody did something to the fire which increased
the light it gave.

"Turn them round," Maternus commanded. "Humph," he commented, "by their
faces they are a Roman gentleman and his Greek secretary; by their backs
they are fugitive slaves with bad records."

"They are both branded," added Torix, who had been inspecting us.

"Where?" queried Maternus. "I don't see any brand marks."

"On the left shoulder, each of them," Torix replied.

"Humph!" Maternus commented, "rascally slaves and indulgent master, or
canny owner of valuable, if restive, property."

Just as he said this there was a yell at our left and Caulonius Pelops
rushed in from somewhere beyond the firelight, probably from outside the
cave.

"Here's the solution of our dilemma," he cried. "We are all right now.
We've two men who know Commodus by sight. This is Andivius Hedulio, my
former master's nephew, and the other is his secretary, Agathemer."

"What, in the name of Mithras," Maternus breathed, "is your master's
nephew doing in a cave in the Apennines, with his back all scourge-marks
and a runaway-slave brand on his shoulder?"

Then ensued a long series of questions and answers, in the course of which
Agathemer and I pretty well told our story.

Maternus asked the assemblage whether they believed us and the consensus
was that they believed us and Pelops, who reminded them that Claudius had
read to them lists of those involved in conspiracies, who had been
executed or banished and their properties confiscated; that my name had
been among those he read; and t