ke the
risk, go with you and buy four hens, two for you and two for me."

Actually we went out together shortly after sunrise, down the Subura,
through Nerva's Forum, and diagonally across the Forum itself. There I
quaked, for fear of being recognized; and marvelled at the coolness of
Maternus. He feasted his eyes and mind on the gorgeousness about us, but
with such discretion that no one could have conjectured that he was a
foreigner, viewing Rome for the first time.

On down the Vicus Tuscus we went into the meat market, where he bought
four plump, young, white hens. As we started on with them, each of us
carrying two, he asked his first question.

"What building is that?" nodding.

"The Temple of Hercules," I told him.

"I thought so," he said, "they always build his circular. We'll stop in
there on our way back. I never miss a chance to ask his help."

Whereas, when I made my offering before my flight the previous year, the
street had been deserted, since I passed along it within an hour after
sunrise, now it was humming with unsavory life, the eating-stalls under
the vaults crowded, throngs about the Babylonian and Egyptian seers who
prophesied anyone's future for a copper, tawdry hussies leering before the
doors of their dens, unsavory louts chatting with some of them, idlers
everywhere. This festering cess-pool of humanity Maternus regarded with
disdain and contempt manifest to me, but carefully concealed behind a
bland expression.

When we came out of the Temple of Mercury, after making our offering,
Maternus whispered:

"Walk very much at ease and as if your mind were as much as possible at
peace; two men opposite are watching us."

I assumed my most indifferent air and carefully avoided looking across the
street, except for one cautious glance from the lowest step of the Temple.
Then I glimpsed, leaning against a pier of the outer arcade of the Circus
Maximus, two men wrapped in dingy cloaks, for the morning had been cool.
After we were in the Temple of Hercules, Maternus asked:

"Did you recognize them?"

"One I had never seen," I replied. "The other I have seen before, but I do
not know who he is nor where I have seen him."

Not until after midnight that night did it suddenly pop into my head that
he was the same man whom I had first seen on horseback in the rain on the
crossroad above Vediamnum, the man whom Tanno had asserted was a
professional informer and accredited Imperial spy, the man wh