They were not sorry to lie down, though their couches, all except one, were on the ground, and made up of skins. What was that to sailors after a long ride through the night? The day was far advanced when Diôtes awoke them. He had prepared a repast of goat’s milk and venison, with some cheese and fruit. After that they set out again on their journey, along a spur of the lower Apennines for some three hours more, at as quick a pace as Biôtides could keep up. Then they descended into a broad valley, with a clear stream running through it. At the end of this valley, shut in on both sides by the hills, was a goatherd’s hut. For this they made. Here Diôtes put before them the remainder of the provisions he had brought with him, and left them in charge of Hermas, the goatherd, telling them that he or some other of the servants of Eumanthes would come as soon as possible with news and more provisions. The lodging was rougher than that of the night before, but the spirits of all were high; those of Alkibiades were now highest of them all. There was something adventurous about this, and the change from soft beds and silken coverlets, such as were prepared for him on board the _Eros_, and from the luxurious living he was accustomed to, brought out a latent hardihood he was soon to find an opportunity to show. His was a character which could fit itself to any change of circumstances, to any country, to any mode of life; but wherever he might be he would be first, the most beloved, often the most envied of mankind. Next morning they were up betimes. The supplies Diôtes promised had not come, nor were they wanted. The stream was full of trout, and no party of schoolboys out on a holiday ever abandoned themselves to greater frolic and enjoyment. Alkibiades constructed a net to catch the fish, and invented a new way of cooking them. By the time they were spread out smoking on platters made of leaves on the rich turf, the appetites of the party would have made most fish delectable. So what of this, the finest flavoured that the streams of earth afford, and cooked by Alkibiades? Hermas provided bread, coarse, perhaps, and somewhat hard; but his cheese was excellent; and he produced a basketful of those cray-fish we have heard of twice before. He had caught and cooked them while the others were fishing for the trout. ‘Stop,’ said Alkibiades; ‘I see a herb will make a noble salad;’ and so it did with oil of which Hermas had a store, made from the olives in the groves through which they had passed two days before. There was no wine there, and they wanted none. The fresh mountain air in which they took their breakfast,—a breakfast caught and cooked by themselves, for the first time in the lives of most of them,—made up for that. Alkibiades drank from the mountain stream as it flowed by them clear and icy cold. ‘After all,’ said he, ‘water is not so bad to drink—sometimes.’