Uncertain as he had been at the first who were the men, whom he thus recklessly attacked, Aulus Fulvius had not well turned the angle of the wood, before he recognized the faces of almost all the leading men of the opposite party. They were the oldest and most trusty of the clients of his house; and half a dozen, at the least, of his own name and kindred led them. It needed not a moment therefore, to satisfy him that they were in quest of himself, and of himself alone—that they were no organized troop and invested with no state authority, but merely a band suddenly collected from his father’s household, to bring him back in person from the fatal road on which he had entered so fatally. Well did he know the rigor of the old Roman law, as regarded the paternal power, and well did he know, the severity with which his father would execute it. The terrors inspired by the thought of an avenging country, would have been nothing—the bare idea of being surrendered a fettered captive to his dread father’s indignation, maddened him. Fiercely therefore, as he rushed out leading his ambushed followers, the fury of his first charge was mere boy’s play when compared to the virulent and concentrated rage with which he fought, after he had discovered fairly against whom he was pitted. Had his men shared his feeling, the pursuers must have been utterly defeated and cut to pieces, without the possibility of escape. But while he recognized his personal enemies in the persons he attacked, the men who followed him as quickly perceived that those, whom they were cutting down, were not regular soldiers, nor led by any Roman magistrate. They almost doubted, therefore, as they charged, whether they were not in error; and when the horsemen of the other faction were discomfitted and driven down the hill on the instant, they felt no inclination to pursue or harass them farther. Not so, however, Aulus. He had observed in the first onset, the features of a cousin, whom he hated; and now, added to other motives, the fierce thirst for his kinsman’s blood, stirred his blood almost into frenzy. Knowing, moreover, that he was himself the object of their pursuit, he knew likewise that the pursuit would not be given up for any casual check, but that to conquer, he must crush them. Precipitately, madly therefore he drove down the hill, oversetting horseman after horseman, the greater part of them unwounded—for the short Roman sword, however efficient at close quarters and on foot, was a most ineffective weapon for a cavalier—until he reached the bottom of the hill. There he reined up his charger for a moment, and looked back, waving his hand and shouting loudly to bring on his comrades to a second charge. To his astonishment, however, he saw them collected in a body at nearly a mile’s distance, on the brow of the first hill, beckoning him to come back, and evidently possessed by no thought, less than that of risking their lives or liberty by any fresh act of hostility.