try full of escaped beasts of prey. I had never understood my power
over all animals, but I had always conceived that it depended on the way I
looked to them when they gazed at me. I was totally unafraid of the most
ferocious beast by daylight, but by no means comfortable in twilight or
dusk, while after dark I had no reason to think that a lion, or tiger
would prove more tractable to me than to any other man. I felt that I must
hasten home, if I was ever to reach it alive. With what breath I had left
I ran the rest of the easy downhill path to the highway.

When I reached it twilight had not yet deepened into dusk and I could see
fairly well. The four hamstrung horses were struggling pitifully to rise
and screaming at intervals. With my sheathknife I put them out of their
misery; as also the four pack-mules which lay, similarly hamstrung, in the
roadway, behind the carriage.

In spite of my dread of carnivora after dark I examined the coach and what
lay about it on the road. There were two kidskins, bulging roundly,
presumably with wine. Three covered food hampers, unopened; and, intact, a
beautiful little inlaid chest, such as ladies have for their combs,
brushes, ointment-pots and similar toilet articles. From their condition I
conjectured that the bandits had just commenced to rummage the coach when
the unexpected approach of the mounted constables, whose small numbers
they most likely did not realize, had scared them away.

Reluctant to be off and fearing to remain, I glanced about, irresolute. In
a clump of willows and alders in the midst of the swampy tract I caught
sight of a bit of color out of keeping with anything which naturally
belonged there and suggesting a woman's garment. There was a dryshod way
to that clump of trees and bushes. I threaded it towards what I had
glimpsed. When I was hardly more than half way from the road to the clump
I thought I heard a sob. I made haste.

Hearing the place I saw a young and slender and graceful woman dressed as
a slave girl. Somehow the sight of her brought to my mind's-eye vivid
recollections of my convalescent outings in Nemestronia's water-garden.
She looked terrified and yet hesitating to flee from me, as if she feared
the swamp. A step nearer I realized that Vedia's maid, a woman not unlike
her in build, as faithful to her as Agathemer was to me and amazingly
astute, had had the shrewdness and also the time to fool the brigands by
exchanging clothes with her mi