t moonlight, were two stocky men on roan
or bay horses. The moonlight was bright enough to make it certain that
they were wearing the garb of Imperial couriers. The trappings of their
horses, frontlets, saddle cloths, saddle bags and all suited their attire.

But their actions, words, accents and everything about them was most
discordant with their horses and equipment.

Both were so drunk that they could just stick on their stationary and
impassive mounts, so drunk that they talked thickly. And they were
disputing and arguing and wrangling with their voices raised almost to a
shout. Thickly as they talked, we had listened to them but a few moments
when we were sure that they were low-class highwaymen who had robbed two
Imperial couriers, tied and gagged them, changed clothes with them and
ridden off on their horses, but had stopped to drink, raw and unmixed, the
couriers' overgenerous supply of heady wine; two kid-skins, by their
utterances. Now they were reviling each other, each claiming a larger
proportion of the coins than he had.

Here was a present from Mercury, indeed. It was a matter of no difficulty
to crawl out of our hole, to approach Carex and Junco, as they called each
other, to pluck their daggers from their sheaths and to render the
highwaymen harmless, to pull them from their saddles, tie their hands with
the lashings of their saddle-bags and to gag them with strips torn from
their tunics; for they were too drunk to know that they were being
attacked; so drunk that each, as we dragged him from his horse, fancied
that the other was assaulting him and expostulated at such unfair behavior
on the part of a pal. So drunk were they that both were snoring before we
tied their feet with more strips torn from their tunics.

Like sacks we hauled them out of the moonlight, into the shadow of the
tomb and then stripped them except of their tunics, fitted on ourselves
the accoutrements they had stolen, and thrust them, trussed, gagged,
snoring and helpless, into the hole where we had taken shelter.

On horseback we rode like couriers, full gallop, passed Loria before the
first hint of dawn showed through the moonlight and, about half way
between Fregena and Alsium turned aside into a lovely little grove about
an old shrine of Ops Consiva, a grove whose beauty and the openness of
whose tree-embowered, grass-carpeted spaces was plain even by the
moonlight.

As soon as it was light enough to see we took stock of o