us Asper and Sabinus Felix. You
do not know these men. Therefore they are passing under false names. They
are not Imperial couriers, but some of the scoundrels who have been posing
as Imperial couriers and using the post-roads for their own private ends.
I thank you for assisting me to expose them. It now remains to arrest
them!"

I had thought when the two entered first and saluted us that their
expression of face was queer; now it was queerer: they looked like some of
the deer we had seen in the net-pocket at Spinella, frantic to escape and
seeing no way out.

One mumbled something about having barely seen Bruttius Asper and Sabinus
Felix and not being sure that we were not they. But Donnotaurus neither
heard nor heeded.

"Here, Tectosax!" he called to the host, "come help us arrest these men!
They are bogus! They are shams! They are not couriers!"

"One man arrest two!" the host demurred.

"I only want your help," Donnotaurus bawled. "Call Arecomus and the
ostlers. They can make short work of it."

At this point Agathemer found his voice, and he spoke steadily, coolly and
firmly, even with a bit of a drawl.

"Don't do anything you will have to be sorry for," he said. "Better not
make any mistake."

At his utterance the two couriers were manifestly even more uncomfortable
than before. But Donnotaurus only bawled louder to the host.

"I don't arrest travellers," the host protested, "I feed 'em. Arecomus
don't arrest travellers, he horses 'em. Anyhow, there's no magistrate
here; talking of arresting is folly.

"And I wish you'd quit your foolishness, Donnotaurus. This is the third
row you've started here within six months. You're giving my inn a bad name
and ruining my trade. You're my best customer, yourself, but you are more
nuisance than all the rest of my customers put together. I'd rather you'd
move out of the neighborhood or keep away from my inn than go on with such
nonsense. I don't want anybody arrested on my premises or threatened with
arrest. And you've nothing to go on in this case, anyhow."

Donnotaurus appeared at a loss, but obstinate and about to insist, when
the doors opened and there entered a bevy of staff officers, all green and
gold and blue and silver, clustered about a huge man in the full regalia
of a general, his crimson plumes nodding above his golden helmet, his
crimson cloak dangling about his golden cuirass, his gilt kilt-straps
gleaming over his crimson tunic-skirt. There was n