propraetor. I kept my eyes on the road in that direction, only glancing
northward from time to time. One such glance caught a glimpse of a
travelling carriage among the beast-wagons; probably the procurator in
charge of the bullion.

After I had caught glimpses of it on several successive hilltops the
propraetor's carriage was near enough, on one of them, for me to recognize
it. Of course, I had known from childhood the travelling carriages of our
senate and nobility. As everybody knows, each, has a certain unmistakable
individuality. Our makers of travelling carriages never make two precisely
alike, and, what is more, the tastes of different families are so
different that patterns are very unlike. I recognized the carriage for
that of Faltonius Bambilio.

Why he was going out as propraetor of Asia so long after his term as
praetor was a puzzle to me. I accepted it as one of the countless
eccentricities of Imperial administration under Commodus. The
irregularities of the management of the provinces ruled in the name of
Caesar by prefects and procurators had notoriously extended to the
provinces ruled by proconsuls and propraetors in the name of the senate. I
had always disliked, despised and even hated Bambilio for his pomposity,
self-esteem and bad manners. I rejoiced at the opportunity to look on at
his capture.

It was by this time past the middle of the afternoon, the day still
surpassingly fair and lovely, with few clouds in the sky, a steady light
breeze, the mellow afternoon sunlight bathing the world and the sun
already visibly declining towards the western horizon.

While I was grinning at my thoughts and watching the advance of Bambilio's
carriage, glancing back at intervals at the beast-train and the
procurator's coach, I caught sight, on the highway behind Bambilio's
carriage, of another travelling carriage of which I had descried no
glimpse before, though I must have missed seeing it as it topped several
hills further south. When I caught sight of it, it was near enough for me
to recognize it at first view.

Vedia's travelling coach!

Between the first and second beat of my thumping heart, I went through an
amazing variety of complex, shifting and lucid thinking. And my thinking,
multifold and effective as it was, was but as a chip on the surface of a
freshet in a mountain gorge amid the torrent of emotions which inundated
me.

Since I had begun to mend as the result of the succour and medication o