n
too fiercely to permit of comfortable travel save toward morning or
night. The inn-keeper had hurried out and stood in the roadway, bowing
and wreathing his face with smiles of welcome, while, behind him, were
grouped his servants, each bearing some implement of his or her
calling--a muster well calculated to impress the wayfarer with the
assurance of comfort and good cheer.

The occasion of all this demonstration was a party that had halted,
apparently for refreshment and the customary traveller's siesta; a
rheda or four-wheeled travelling carriage, closely covered and drawn by
three powerful horses yoked abreast. Two armed outriders, one
apparently a freedman and the other a slave, made up the company, the
former of whom, a stout, elderly man with gray hair and beard, had
reined in his horse before the obsequious host, while the other
remained by the carriage wheel, as if to aid the driver in guarding the
rheda's occupants from intrusion.

The innkeeper, short and fat, was breathing hard from the haste in
which he had sallied out, but his words came volubly:--

"Let the gentlemen alight and enter--or, if they be ladies, so much the
better. They shall make trial of the best inn along the whole length
of the Queen of Ways. Such couches as they have never seen, save,
doubtless, in their magnificent homes, fit for the gods to lie
upon!--such dishes!--such cooking! guinea-hens fed and fattened under
my own eye, mullet fresh from the water with all greens of the season,
and such wine as only the Massic Mount can grow--"

Here, however, he paused to take breath, and the freedman succeeded in
interrupting the flow of words.

"By the gods! will you be silent?" he said. "Perhaps we shall try your
fare, if you do not take up the whole day in telling us about it.
First, however, it is necessary for us to learn certain things. How
many miles is it to Capua?"

The innkeeper's face took on a grieved look in place of the beaming
smile of a moment since, but he answered promptly and humbly:--

"The matter of twenty-five miles, my master."

"At what hour do they close the gates?"

The innkeeper glanced back at the group of domestics with a frightened
expression.

"That is a military question," he said. "How can I answer it in these
times? It is dangerous to talk about such things."

"Not dangerous for you," insisted the other, rather scornfully. "Since
you Campanians have become pulse-eaters, not the wildest Nu