In the mean time, the fugitives, who had now reached the level ground and found themselves unpressed, began to halt; and before Aulus Fulvius had well made up his mind what to do, they had been rallied and reformed, and were advancing slowly, with a firm and unbroken front, well calculated to deter his handful, which had already been diminished in strength, by one man killed, and four or five more or less severely wounded, from rashly making any fresh attack. Alone and unsupported, nothing remained for him but to retreat if possible, and make his way back to his people, who, he felt well assured would again charge, if again menaced with pursuit. To do this, however, had now ceased to be an easy, perhaps to be a feasible matter. Between himself and his own men, there were at least ten of his father’s clients; several of them indeed were wounded, and all had been overthrown in the shock either by himself or his troopers; but they had all regained their horses, and—apparently in consequence of some agreement or tacit understanding with his comrades, were coming down the hill at a gentle trot to rejoin their own party. Now it was that Aulus began to regret having sent forward the smith, and those of the conspirators to whom he was individually known, with Julia in the van. Since of the fellows who had followed him thus far, merely because inferior will always follow superior daring, and who now appeared mightily inclined to desert him, not three were so much as acquainted with his name, and not one had any intimacy with him, or indeed any community of feeling unless it were the community of crime. These things flashed upon Aulus in an instant; the rather that he saw the hated cousin, whom he had passed unnoticed in his headlong charge, quietly bringing the clients into line between himself and his wavering associates. He was in fact hemmed in on every side; he was alone, and his horse, which he had taxed to the uttermost, was wounded and failing fast. His case was indeed desperate, for he could now see that his own faction were drawing off already with the evident intention of rejoining the bulk of the party, careless of his fate, and glad to escape at so small a sacrifice. Still, even in this extremity he had no thought of surrender—indeed to him death and surrender were but two names for one thing. He looked to the right and to the left, if there were any possibility of scaling the wooded slopes and so rejoining the sturdy swordsmith without coming to blows again with his father’s household; but one glance told him that such hopes were vain indeed. On either hand the crags rose inaccessible even to the foot of man, unless he were a practised mountaineer.