After a score of tunes, while our first goblets of wine were not yet emptied, Agathemer said:
"Felix, I believe I see a way out of our troubles."
"Asper," I replied, "I leave it all to you."
"Doris, my dear," said Agathemer, "we are not Imperial Couriers at all."
Doris stared.
"You mean it?" she asked.
"So help me Hercules," said Agathemer solemnly.
"Well," she meditated, with a sharp intake of her breath. "You fooled me.
I thought you were genuine. How did you come in this rig?"
"We belong in Rome, both of us," Agathemer began. "How we came in Placentia is no part of the story. But we were in Placentia and we got into trouble. It wasn't serious trouble; we hadn't killed anybody, or stolen anything, or cheated anybody; but it was trouble enough and aplenty and we decided to get out of Placentia. Roads, road-houses, the towns wouldn't have been healthy for us just then, so we took to the mountains. Not as brigands, you understand, but we hadn't much cash and coin will go farther in the mountains than anywhere else; and the weather was fine and we meant to camp out all we could and stay out all summer and let things blow over. It was hot, burning hot and we blundered on a cave, a nice, big, airy dry cave. We went in to cool off and sleep. And we slept sound."
Then he told our entire story, just as it happened, from our capture by Maternus and his band, all down to Rome, into the Gardens of Verus, out along the Aurelian Highway among the tombs, all about the two drunken robbers, in the moonlight, all about our gallop along the coast, all about our encounter with Pescennius Niger.