o mistaking that
incredible expanse of face, seemingly as big as the body of an ordinary
man, those bleary gray eyes under the shaggy eyebrows, their great baggy
lower lids, the heavy cheeks and the vast sweep of russet beard.

It was Pescennius Niger himself!

As he was later proclaimed Emperor and narrowly missed overcoming his
competitors and emerging master of the world, the mere encounter has a
certain interest. Its details, I think, even more.

Up to us he strode.

"What's all this?" he demanded in his big, authoritative voice. Agathemer
and I stood up and saluted.

I expected Agathemer, who knew the value of speaking first, to anticipate
Donnotaurus, but he let Donnotaurus give his version of the affair.

"I'm competent to decide this," said Pescennius, "and I shall."

And he eyed us, asking: "What have you two to say?"

"In the first place," said Agathemer, "I ask you to examine our papers."

He took from the seat of his chair, where he had placed it as he stood up,
our despatch bag, opened it, and displayed its contents; the package of
despatches, our credentials, and the diploma entitling us to change of
horses, with the endorsement of each change-master from Centumcellae
onwards.

Pescennius examined these meditatively.

"These papers," he said, "are in perfect order. But they do not prove that
you are the men named in them though they incline me to believe it. I
should believe it, but these men deny that you are Bruttius Asper and
Sabinus Felix."

"And why do they deny it?" Agathemer queried triumphantly. "Why, because
they were caught by this busybody and asked whether they knew Bruttius
Asper and Sabinus Felix and they said they did; then haled in here by him
and confronted with us and asked whether they knew us and of course said
they did not, as they did not. And why do they not know us? Because they
are not couriers at all, but men passing themselves off as couriers. Our
papers are in perfect order, as you say. Ask them for their papers. They
haven't any!"

By the faces of the two I saw that Agathemer had guessed right. They, in
fact, were impostors. They had no despatches, no credentials, no papers at
all, except a diploma with entries from Bononia, through Parma, Placentia
and Clastidium to Dertona and so onwards; a diploma so manifestly a clumsy
forgery that, at sight of it, I wondered how it had fooled the stupidest
change-master.

Pescennius barely glanced at it. To his apparitors,