"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 refreshment on their three days' journey, Wardo was taken aside by strangers, who talked earnestly. "The state of the country," he told his men, with his tongue in his cheek. Most of these strangers were fair-skinned Saxons, like himself; indeed, the number of these was significant. Wardo, coming from the south, had to tell what he knew of recent happenings there. This was not much; his interlocutors, it would seem, knew more than he. Especially did they inquire to whom he belonged, and what he was doing with his charges.
They crossed the Sabrina in a flat-bottomed barge, and were in Britannia Secunda, the ancient country of the Silures. Here, from Uriconium to Glevum on the Sabrina, and south to Leucarum on the Via Julia, were scattered the iron mines from which their owners drew inexhaustible wealth. The one controlled by Eudemius lay five Roman miles west of the river, and was reckoned one of the largest and richest in the section. In it were said to be employed over five hundred men, mostly prisoners from the various estates of Eudemius, and overseers.
VII