The food revived me, and even before the dawn-wind had died, the rays of the sun began to make themselves felt. I began to be restless; Agathemer again checked me.
"Keep still," he commanded. "As soon as the sun has dried the dew off the leaves I can make you more comfortable. Just now we are best as we are."
I kept under the leaves, but I peered about. At each end of the cleft between the two halves of the rock I could see the brook brawling by among the worn stones. The line of the cleft was directly across the bed of the brook; and, along the cleft, past the detached, almost buried, altar- shaped stone, I descried, barely discernible but unmistakable, such a path as is made by the bare or sandalled feet of even one human being following daily the same track. I conned it. I judged that it was many, many decades old and had been trodden daily for a lifetime or so, but that it had been totally disused for at least a year and possibly for more.
I pointed it out to Agathemer and asked him about it.
"That," he said, "is part of what used to be the shorter and more used of the two paths from Furfur's villa to Philargyrus's farmstead. Naturally, since the Philargyrus farm has been detached from Furfur's estate and has become part of yours, there must be very little intercommunication between the farm and the villa and I judged that any slave going from one to the other would avoid the more obvious path and sneak round the longer way. Therefore I judged it safer to locate here, as this path is probably totally unused."
"How did you know of it?" I queried.
Up to his neck in leaves, arms under too, only his head out, Agathemer blushed all over his handsome face.
"Before Andivius won the suit," he said, "while Philargyrus was still Furfur's tenant, I had an impassioned love-affair with one of Furfur's slave-girls. We used to meet here, at first on moonlit nights, and, later, when we each knew every inch of our way here and home again, more often on moonless nights. I always waded up and down the bed of the brook, so as to leave no scent for any dog to follow. I know this nook well and thought of it the instant I began to plan an escape for you."
I said nothing.
"It is barely possible," he said, "that some one may use this path, even if no one has passed along it for months. That is just the way luck turns out. I mean to be invisible if anyone does come. There was no likelihood of anyone coming by at dawn, and no possibility of doing anything if anyone did come. Now it is warm enough for me to pick off the outer layer of dew-wet leaves from whatever heaps of dead leaves are hereabouts. I can gather the dry leaves into that little grotto. We can lie on a bed of them, wrapped up in them we can cower under them, we can even pull our heads under and be invisible if we hear footsteps approaching. You keep still."