warily, dazed in the
unwonted light. Nicanor threw a bit of cloth torn from his tunic over
its head, fastening it so that the beast could neither bite nor see,
tied its forelegs together, and without more ado thrust it inside his
tunic. Wardo gaped.

"Well, of all playmates! Will he not scratch thee?"

"Not while the cloth is about his head," Nicanor answered. There came an
odd note of pride into his voice. "Momus and I are old friends. I maimed
him; he hath bitten me. Now we understand each other. I have taught him
to fight,--he is quite as intelligent as Hito,--and there is not a rat
in the dungeons that can beat him. Man, you should see him fight!"

"I'd like to!" quoth Wardo, promptly. "Maybe, at Cunetio or Corinium we
shall find some trainer to try a main with thee. Now come; we have
tarried long enough."

In the slaves' court Hito was fuming over the departure of his deputy
and the half dozen prisoners. As Wardo and Nicanor approached he leered
upon them balefully.

"So, white-face!" he taunted. "Art recovered from thy madness?"

"Ha, fair Julia, how art thou?" Nicanor greeted him imperturbably, so
that Hito cursed him. For word of Hito's dance had spread, and even his
lords had laughed at him.

"Oh, ay, I remember!" he snarled. "This is to teach thee not to call thy
betters names. Were it not for thy insubordination, I should have
cancelled thy sentence to the mines. It is not well to laugh at Hito! I
have a doubt in my mind that thou wert not so mad as it seemed."

"I have no doubt in mine that I was not so mad as thou," said Nicanor,
with all cheerfulness.

Hito glared, and Wardo mounted and made haste to get his party under
way. His assistant snapped the chains on Nicanor's wrists which bound
him to his fellows, and got on his own horse. They went out through the
gate, opened by a sleepy porter, and took the road.

All through that night they plodded steadily. Once a horseman overtook
them, riding furiously; shouted something which none could catch, and
was gone in darkness. Their road led them over the downs and through the
heather by the little station of Bibracte to Calleva, where four roads
joined; and on through the level and open country around Corinium,
where, to south and west, among shaded groves, they caught glimpses of
palaces and stately homes. So, in time, they came to the scarred hills
of the great iron district of the west.

At each station where they stopped for rest and refreshmen