We found the girls housed in as neat, cosy and charming a little nest as heart could wish for. The atrium was tiny, the courtyard was tiny, everything was tiny. But it all had an air which put us at our ease and made us feel at home. Doris, the dark-haired, red-cheeked, full-contoured lass, was plainly much taken with Agathemer and he with her; I always had a weakness for red-headed girls and felt genuinely pleased that Nebris, her long-limbed, long-fingered, pale-skinned, blurred, bleached comrade seemed equally taken with me. The sofas of the tiny _triclinium_ were soft and comfortable and, after eight days in the saddle, without a bath, we were glad to loll on them. The wine was good and, without any effort, the four of us fell into cheerful chatter about nothing in particular. I complimented Doris on her dwelling and its furnishings and she at once insisted on showing us all over it: the kitchen, bath and latrine beyond the tiny courtyard and upstairs a second _triclinium_, as tiny as that below, and four tiny bed-rooms, with handsomely carved beds, piled with deep, soft feather beds and feather-pillows. Doris and Nebris each had her bed-room furnished to harmonize with her own coloring. I complimented both on their taste. In Nebris's room Agathemer spied a flageolet. "Do you play on this?" he asked. "Sometimes," she said, "but Doris declares that my music makes her melancholy, it's so dismal." "I'll play you any number of lively tunes," Agathemer promised, possessing himself of the flageolet. We all went down into the lower _triclinium_, where we had left the wine, and Agathemer charmed the girls with his music and, indeed, enlivened me as much as them. 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."