and, without any effort, the
four of us fell into cheerful chatter about nothing in particular. I
complimented Doris on her dwelling and its furnishings and she at once
insisted on showing us all over it: the kitchen, bath and latrine beyond
the tiny courtyard and upstairs a second _triclinium_, as tiny as that
below, and four tiny bed-rooms, with handsomely carved beds, piled with
deep, soft feather beds and feather-pillows. Doris and Nebris each had her
bed-room furnished to harmonize with her own coloring. I complimented both
on their taste.

In Nebris's room Agathemer spied a flageolet.

"Do you play on this?" he asked.

"Sometimes," she said, "but Doris declares that my music makes her
melancholy, it's so dismal."

"I'll play you any number of lively tunes," Agathemer promised, possessing
himself of the flageolet.

We all went down into the lower _triclinium_, where we had left the wine,
and Agathemer charmed the girls with his music and, indeed, enlivened me
as much as them.

After a score of tunes, while our first goblets of wine were not yet
emptied, Agathemer said:

"Felix, I believe I see a way out of our troubles."

"Asper," I replied, "I leave it all to you."

"Doris, my dear," said Agathemer, "we are not Imperial Couriers at all."

Doris stared.

"You mean it?" she asked.

"So help me Hercules," said Agathemer solemnly.

"Well," she meditated, with a sharp intake of her breath. "You fooled me.
I thought you were genuine. How did you come in this rig?"

"We belong in Rome, both of us," Agathemer began. "How we came in
Placentia is no part of the story. But we were in Placentia and we got
into trouble. It wasn't serious trouble; we hadn't killed anybody, or
stolen anything, or cheated anybody; but it was trouble enough and aplenty
and we decided to get out of Placentia. Roads, road-houses, the towns
wouldn't have been healthy for us just then, so we took to the mountains.
Not as brigands, you understand, but we hadn't much cash and coin will go
farther in the mountains than anywhere else; and the weather was fine and
we meant to camp out all we could and stay out all summer and let things
blow over. It was hot, burning hot and we blundered on a cave, a nice,
big, airy dry cave. We went in to cool off and sleep. And we slept sound."

Then he told our entire story, just as it happened, from our capture by
Maternus and his band, all down to Rome, into the Gardens of Verus, out
along the Aureli