m a present equal to the value of half the property in dispute
in the lawsuit. As Ducconius had had to repay to my uncle the full amount
of the rents paid since his family first gained possession of the
property, that would have been a very moderate reward for Agathemer's
service. I also conjectured that he might free Agathemer and will him a
sum equivalent to the net proceeds of the repaid rents, less the costs of
the suit. I should not have been surprised if he had made him a present of
the whole farm out and out. Many an owner has done more for a slave who
had done less for him."

"And you would have regarded it as fair if your uncle had taken any of
those methods of recompensing Agathemer?"

"Certainly!" I affirmed.

"Then why, in the name of Mercury," he demanded, "didn't you free
Agathemer the moment the will was read?"

"I have told you over and over," I retorted impatiently, "that my uncle's
will enjoined me not to free Agathemer within five years, though he also
enjoined that I was to make a new will at once so as to leave Agathemer
free and recompensed if I died before the five years elapsed."

"But the injunction was not binding," Tanno persisted, "either in law or
by religious custom. No dead man can prevent his heirs freeing slaves he
leaves them. Why heed the injunction?"

"I could not contravene so explicit a behest of the dead," I demurred,
"especially of a man I loved and revered. And you must recall my uncle's
queer habit of acting on intuitions and the way he expressed them, always
saying:

"'It has been revealed to me that....' And his intuitions always seemed to
amount to prevision, he never seemed to have acted amiss, however
eccentric his act, however baseless his premonition. I have a feeling that
in Agathemer's case he acted on some such presentiment."

Tanno turned to Agathemer.

"Do you feel that way too?" he demanded.

"I most certainly do," said Agathemer, "I have a feeling that my remaining
a slave is going to be of vital service to Hedulio, somehow, sometime."

"Then you are content to remain a slave?" Tanno queried.

"No one wants to remain a slave," Agathemer confessed, "and every slave
longs to be a free man and is impatient to be free at once. But I try to
be resigned, of course, and, except that I cannot rejoice in not being
free, I am as well fed, clothed and housed as I should be as a free man
and have as much leisure."

Tanno glowered at both of us.

I cut in:

"