We had excellent luck. Hiding by day and threading devious paths by night we reached and passed the Avens and the Salarian Highway without any encounter with any human being; and indeed without near proximity to any. Our daytime hiding-places all turned out to have been well chosen and no one approached us in any one of them. The moon, which was in her first quarter on the night of our setting out, helped us nightly. There was no rain and only some moderate cloudiness, enough to be helpful at the time of the full moon, when there was enough light all night for us to see to travel at a good rate of speed and without any error at forks in the paths; and yet not enough light to make us conspicuous to any who might be abroad late at night. Once beyond the Nar and almost at the borders of Umbria, we grew bolder, travelled by day, bought food as we needed it, put up at inns and acted the character we had assumed, of Sabines intent on stock-buying in the Umbrian mountains. No one appeared to suspect us and we had no adventures. But, inevitably, once we had escaped, we did not so much think of immediate danger as of permanent safety. Chryseros had confirmed our instinctive opinion that, as Sabines, we should be much less likely to arouse suspicion in Umbria and the Po Valley than in Samnium, Lucania or Bruttium. We had never thought of escape southward; northward we had meant to work our way, from the instant of conceiving the idea of escaping. But we had no settled, coherent plan as to how to achieve safety and keep alive. We could not hide in the mountains indefinitely. We both agreed that we could hide best in a large city. Marseilles might have been a perfect hiding-place could we have reached it, full as it always was of riff-raff from all the shores of the Mediterranean and from all parts of Italy. But Marseilles we could reach only by the Aurelian Highway, through Genoa along the coast, and the Aurelian Highway was certain to be sown with spies and likely enough might be travelled upon by officials who had known me from childhood and would probably know me through any disguise. Aquileia, on the other hand, was far more populous than Marseilles, even more a congeries of rabble from all shores and districts, even more easy- going. In Aquileia we should be able to earn a comfortable living by not too onerous activities and to be wholly unsuspected. Towards Aquileia we decided to try to make our way. The roads, being less travelled, would be less spied-on and we should meet officials less likely to recognize me.