But, if we were to reach Aquileia, we must husband our silver. Agathemer's idea was that, from where we reached the borders of Umbria, somewhere between Trebia and Nursia, we should keep as near as possible to the chine of the mountain-chain, using the roads, paths, tracks or trails highest up the slope of the mountains; avoiding being seen as much as possible, and, if we were seen, claiming to have lost our way through misunderstanding the directions given us by the last natives we had met. He proposed to steal food for us, instead of buying it, and expounded his ideas, maintaining that it would be easy and not dangerous. We tried his plan and succeeded well with it. So wild and untravelled were the districts which we traversed that, nearly half the time, we were welcomed at farmsteads, (to which welcome Agathemer's flageolet-playing greatly assisted us), invited to spend the night and had lavished upon our entertainment all their rustic abundance, so that we visibly grew fat. When such luck did not befall us we had no trouble in helping ourselves to supplies, for, far up the mountains, most habitations were shacks tenanted only in summer and only by lads acting as goat-herds or herdsmen, who spent the day abroad with their charges, so that we could readily enter their deserted cabins and take what we pleased; especially as, if a dog had been left to guard the hut, I could always master him so that he greeted me fawning and stood wagging his tail as we made off. Except these not very risky raids for provender and such encounters as called for more than usually ingenious lying from Agathemer, we had no adventures. But we realized from day to day and more and more insistently, that we were progressing slowly, far slower than we had anticipated. It was plain that we could not hope to reach Aquileia before winter set in. It was manifest that it would be unsafe to attempt to winter anywhere in the Po valley between the mountains and Aquileia. At Ravenna, Bononia or Padua we should be noticed, investigated and perhaps recognized: anywhere in the open country, at any village or farm, we should, even more certainly excite suspicion. We must winter in the mountains. But how or where?