When next I visited them Bulla told me that something had alarmed the procurator. Either some rumor of their presence along the road had reached him or he knew of the bad reputation of the stretch of the Flaminian Highway through the Umbrian mountains between Forum Sempronii and Nuceria, which it had acquired some years before when the King of the Highwaymen himself had made on it a succession of valuable captures which had yielded him princely booty and the reports of which had spread all over Italy. Anyhow their advices informed them that he had packed his bullion-chests with stones and old-iron and had parcelled out his packets of dust and nuggets among the wagons of a long train of arena-beasts. "We'll fool him!" Bulla boasted. "We'll nab him and hold him for a big ransom. Also we'll not only make sure of his bullion chests in case our information is false, or based on an intentional rumor he has given out as a blind; but we'll get that bullion, too, if it is not in the chests, but hidden in the wagons in the guise of dusty packets of provender for the draft-cattle or of meat for the caged beasts. We'll get it!" Prom his mention of the wagons we fell into talk of the increasing difficulty of getting fresh meat for the lions and other beasts, of the depletion of the flocks and herds along the roads from Aquileia, to Rome; and he told me that his advices reported that the whole country near the highways was already swept clean of all goats, sheep and cattle, except breeding stock, milch stock and their choicest young kept for breeding. The inhabitants could get no beef, mutton or goats' flesh for themselves; all had gone into the maws of hyenas, tigers, wolves and the rest; and the procurators were insisting on the farmers selling their kids, lambs, calves, ewes and cows-in-milk, any stock, even mules and horses; any animals fit to butcher for lion-food. From this we came round to chatting of my talks with the teamsters and of my prospect from my crag. I had told Bulla of the crag long before, but he did not seem to have taken in the idea. Now he was delighted. "If I'd paid attention to you soon enough," he said, "I'd have put in a day or two with you watching the show. It's too late now. Our prayed for chances are coming soon, and not far apart." Next day he was gleeful.