These antics caused my lord to smile outright. He was willing to expend two thousand sesterces in order to have such a creature about his house, to have him ready to call when his guests seemed dull between the courses of a sumptuous meal. The deal was soon concluded and the hunchback transferred from the platform to the keeping of my lord's slaves, and thence to my lord's household.
CHAPTER III
"Fairer than the children of men."—Psalm xlv. 2.
"Hun Rhavas, dost mind thy promise made to Menecreta?" whispered a timid voice in the African's ear.
"Aye, aye!" he replied curtly, "I had not forgotten."
There was a lull in the trade whilst the scribes were making entries on their tablets.
The auctioneer had descended from the rostrum. Panting after his exertions, perspiring profusely under the heat of the noonday sun, he was wiping the moisture from his dripping forehead and incidentally refreshing his parched throat with copious drafts from out a leather bottle.
His swarthy skin streaming with perspiration shone in the glare of the noonday sun like the bronze statue of mother-wolf up aloft.