n far
afield. Do you like horses? Can you manage horses?"

"I love all animals," I said, "and most particularly horses."

"Then," said the alderman, "I have already in mind the very place for you,
where none of your rancorous late associates can ever find you, on an
Imperial stock-farm or breeding-ranch in the uplands, among the forested
mountains. Would you consider it a reward, would you consider it the
fulfillment of your wish to be transferred from our town _ergastulum_,
where you were as an Imperial slave rented out to our city, to such an
Imperial estate, where you will be directly under the employees of the
_fiscus_?"

"I certainly should feel rewarded," I said, "by such a transfer."

"In addition," he concluded, "we shall present you with a new tunic and
cloak and new shoes, also an extra tunic, and with a purse containing ten
silver pieces."

CHAPTER XXV

THE OPEN COUNTRY

After some days of rest, abundant food and leisurely hot-baths in the
freedman's house, I left Nuceria under convoy of three genial road-
constables and journeyed deliberately northward along the Flaminian
Highway to the Imperial estate which was to be my abode. I am not going to
locate it precisely nor to name the villages nearest it nor the
neighboring towns. It will be quite sufficient to set down that it was
near the Flaminian Highway and approximately half way between Nuceria and
Forum Sempronii.

My reasons for vagueness are mandatory, to my mind. Feuds in the Umbrian
mountains differ greatly from feuds in the Sabine hills; but, like
Sabinum, Umbria is afflicted with feuds. Now I anticipate that this book
will not only be widely read among our nobility and gentry and much
discussed by them, but also that it will be talked of by more than half
Rome and that copies of it and talk about it will spread all over Italy
and even into the provinces. Talk of it may trickle into the Umbrian
mountains. Umbrian mountaineers live long. Some of those who loved me and
befriended me or loved and befriended those who loved and befriended me,
may still be alive and hearty and likely to live many years yet. So also
may be some of those who hated me. I do not want anyone holding a grudge,
or nursing the grudge of a dead kinsman or friend, to learn through me of
any secret kindness to me which he might regard as treachery to his kin
and so feel impelled to avenge on those who befriended me or their
children or grandchildren. Umbrian enmiti