We trooped off to the hog-pens and there was a six or eight-year-old sow with a young litter. She was a huge beast, as ugly a sow as ever I saw. I got into her pen, miring half to my knees in its filth, but keeping my feet. She made no move to attack me, but grunted enquiringly. I picked up one of her pigs, it hardly squealed and she grunted scarcely more than she had already. I dangled the piglet before her, and she only smelt it and kept on grunting, with no sign of wrath. "Come out, Felix," the _Villicus_ drawled, "you are sow-proof. But how do you do it?" "I don't know," I replied, "but I have always been able to gentle fierce animals of any kind. No animal ever attacks me." Thereupon he tried me with three rams famous for butting, two he-goats of even worse reputation and half a score of watch-dogs. I came unscathed from close companionship with the goats and rams, and the dogs behaved as if they had been my pets from their puppyhood. "Can you do as well with horses?" the _Villicus_ enquired. "I believe so," I replied; "give me a chance." "I shall," he asserted. "I'll round up all our colts fit for breaking and try you on them. I'll get in most of the boys to watch the fun. It'll take about ten days to get ready. Meanwhile you can take out another bunch of heifers with new calves. It seems to suit you and the calves and the heifers." When I returned from my third outing, hard and fit and happy, the _Villicus_ asked me how soon I would be ready for colt-breaking. "Tomorrow," I said. The next day was made a sort of festival, with all the horse-herders at the villa paddocks. First of all four experienced horse-wranglers roped a filly, threw her, bitted and bridled her while one sat on her head, let her get on her feet, hobbled her, held her so while two more saddled her and then held her while one mounted her. When they let her go she reared, bucked, dashed about, bucked again and again, and continued till exhaustion forced her to quiet down and obey her rider, who had kept his seat from the first. "What do you think of that, Felix?" the _Villicus_ asked me. "As good horse-wrangling as can be seen anywhere," I replied. "Up to standard and even above normal. But I can do better." "Bold words," said the _Villicus_; "we'll give you a chance to prove them." Another filly was roped, bitted, bridled, and saddled, and her captors invited me to mount. "Pooh!" said I. "Let some one else ride her. I don't need all those preliminaries. I can walk right out into that bunch of colts, catch any young stallion you point out, hold him by the nose, gentle him without any rope or thong on him, mount him by vaulting onto his back, and ride him about unbitted, unbridled, bareback, and as I please, without his rearing or backing or kicking." "Son," said the _Villicus_, "you are either a lunatic or a demigod. Go in and try what you boast you can do. Show us." "Point out your stallion," I suggested.