"No, no, Porus," Scopus said. "Do you and Lupus drink, and I will drink with you, but no wine for Beric. I will get him a cup of hot ass's milk; that will give him strength without fevering his blood. Here is a place where they sell it. I will go in with him first, and then join you there; but take not too much. You have a long walk back, and I guess, Lupus, that your head already hums from the blow that Briton gave it. By Bacchus, these Britons are fine men! I thought you had got an easy thing of it, when boom! and there you were stretched out like a dead man." "It was a trick," Lupus said angrily, "a base trick." "Not at all," Scopus replied. "You fought as if in war; and in war if you had an opponent at close quarters, and could not use your sword's point, you would strike him down with the hilt if you could. As I have told you over and over again, you are a good swordsman, but you don't know everything yet by a long way, and you are so conceited that you never will. I hoped that drubbing Beric gave you a few days after he joined us would have done you good, but I don't see that it has. There are some men who never seem to learn. If it had not been for you our ludus would have triumphed all round today; but when one sees a man we put forward as one of our best swordsmen defeated by a raw Briton, people may well say, 'Scopus has got one or two good men; there is Beric, he is a marvel; and Porus is good with the net; but as for the rest, I don't value them a straw." The enraged gladiator sprang upon Scopus, but the latter seized him by the waist and hurled him down with such force that he was unable to rise until Porus assisted him to his feet. As to Scopus, he paid him no farther attention, but putting his hand on Beric's shoulder led him into the shop. A long draught of hot milk did wonders for Beric, and he proposed walking, but Scopus would not hear of it. "Sit down here for five minutes," he said, "till I have a cup of wine with the others. I should think Lupus must need it pretty badly, what with the knock on the head and the tumble I have just given him. I am not sorry that he was beaten by your countryman, for since he has had the luck to win two or three times in the arena, his head has been quite turned. He would never have dared to lay his hand on me had he not been half mad, for he knows well enough that I could strangle him with one hand. The worst of him is, that the fellow bears malice. He has never forgiven you the thrashing you administered to him. Now I suppose he will be sulky for weeks; but if he does it will be worse for him, for I will cut off his wine, and that will soon bring him to his senses." Scopus had gone but a few minutes when he returned with a lectica, which was a sort of palanquin, carried by four stout countrymen. "Really, Scopus, it is ridiculous that I should be carried along the streets like a woman."