"Well," said Tanno, "I take back what I said of you when I called you a hog, but, even if we are taught to utter nothing but good of the dead, I repeat that your uncle was a hog. What do you think of it, Agathemer?" Agathemer sat at ease now on his stool and his face was placid. "Since you have asked what I think," he said, "may I assume that you accord me permission to utter what I think, as if I were even a free man?" "Utter precisely what you think, without any reservations or modifications," said Tanno. "I want to have exactly what you think and all you think." "I think," spoke Agathemer, "that you are neither wise to speak so of the dead nor justified in speaking so of my former master. He was a just man and a wise man. Though I cannot conjecture his reason, I am sure that what he did was, somehow, for the best." Tanno stared at him with a puzzled expression. He turned to me. "Isn't it true," he queried, "that your uncle had on his hands an hereditary lawsuit of the most exasperating sort, in the course of which the other side had won the first decision and every appeal?" "Everybody knows that, Socrates," I admitted. "Didn't Agathemer," Tanno pressed me, "just before the case was heard in the highest court, make a suggestion which your uncle's lawyers utilized and through which they won the case?" "That is also true," I affirmed. "Didn't they all say, that Agathemer's suggestion was just what they should have thought of at the very first and didn't they admit that they had not thought of it until Agathemer suggested it and that they never would have thought of it if he had not suggested it?" "Those are the facts," I confessed. "In view of those facts," Tanno continued, "what did you yourself expect your uncle to do for Agathemer in his will?" I ruminated. "The very least I anticipated," I said, "was that he would free Agathemer and make him a present equal to the value of half the property in dispute in the lawsuit. As Ducconius had had to repay to my uncle the full amount of the rents paid since his family first gained possession of the property, that would have been a very moderate reward for Agathemer's service. I also conjectured that he might free Agathemer and will him a sum equivalent to the net proceeds of the repaid rents, less the costs of the suit. I should not have been surprised if he had made him a present of the whole farm out and out. Many an owner has done more for a slave who had done less for him." "And you would have regarded it as fair if your uncle had taken any of those methods of recompensing Agathemer?" "Certainly!" I affirmed. "Then why, in the name of Mercury," he demanded, "didn't you free Agathemer the moment the will was read?"