ur windfall. The
horses were both bays and of the finest; their trappings new and in
perfect condition. Our attire was made up of the best horsemen's boots, a
trifle too large for us, but not enough to be so noticeable as to betray
us, or even enough to make us uncomfortable; of horsemen's long rain-
cloaks and of excellent umbrella hats, all of the regulation material,
design and color. In the saddle-bags were excellent blankets, our
despatches, legibly endorsed with the name, Munatius Plancus, of the
official at Marseilles to whom we were to deliver them; and our
credentials, entitling us to all possible assistance from all men and to
fresh horses at all change-houses. From these diplomas we learned that our
names were Sabinus Felix and Bruttius Asper.

This crowned our luck. We crowed with glee over the unimaginably helpful
coincidence that these diplomas should be made out for couriers with the
very names which we had chosen at haphazard at the commencement of our
flight and had been using to each other ever since.

The provision of cash was ample: besides plenty of silver there was more
than enough gold to have carried us all the way to Marseilles, on the most
lavish scale of expenditure, without resorting to our credentials to get
us fresh horses.

We ate liberally of the couriers' generous provision of bread, cheese,
sausage, olives and figs; well content to quench our thirst at the spring
by the shrine. Then we muffled ourselves in our cloaks, tightened the
straps of our umbrella hats, jammed them down on our heads, pulled the
brims over our faces, mounted and set off, elated, sure of ourselves, well
fed, well clad, well horsed, opulent, accredited, gay.

As couriers vary in their theories of horse-husbanding and in their
practice of riding, we had a wide choice, and elected to get every mile we
could out of these fine horses and not change until as far as possible
from Rome. We found their most natural lope and, pausing to drink and to
water them sparingly at the loneliest springs we descried, we pressed on
through or past the Towers, Pyrgos, and Castrum Novum to Centumcellae.
That was all of forty-one miles from the shrine of Ops Consiva and full
fifty from Rome, but, partly because we had to spare ourselves, as we had
not been astride of a horse since we crawled through the drain at Villa
Andivia, we so humored our horses that we arrived in a condition which the
ostler took as a matter of course, and it wa