As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen. Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped, whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets, execrations and curses. We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have collapsed on the earth. We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together, naked, bruised, bloody, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the gentlemen came up out of the gully. Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat in his hand and mopping his forehead. "Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not the men at all! They are not in the least like them!" "Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added. "What a pack of asses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two strangers. Couldn't you look at them before you mauled them?" "We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined. "Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their backs." They turned us round, to display the marks of scourging still plain on us both. "They've both been branded," said a gentleman's voice. "Pooh!" cried another, "that proves nothing. They may have been scourged and branded by former masters, and manumitted since. I'll have no stranger ill-treated on my land until he has had a chance to explain himself." While he was speaking my guards turned me round again and took their hands off me. Our champion was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy, curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He wore senators' boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant green and embroidered all over with a flowering vine in a darker, glossier green. "What are your names?" asked the elder man who had noticed our brand- marks. He was swarthy and probably over thirty. I gave him the name of Felix and Agathemer that of Asper, as we had agreed, neither of us thinking it advisable to claim to be free Romans by prefixing, "Sabinus" and "Bruttius." "Shut up, Marcus," our champion ordered, "can't you see that these poor fellows are in no condition to answer any questions? We'll interrogate them after they have bathed, eaten and slept."