“C-C-Careful,” she warned him, laboriously stuttering. “I am Flexinna come back. Now for Aricia, as fast as the b-b-bearers can hoof it.” Vocco, dazed, helped her into the litter, gave the order and mounted his horse. Composed in her litter, Brinnaria’s sensations were all of the strangeness of the outlook; fog blurring the outlines of familiar buildings; fog hiding the landmarks she looked for, fog wrapping her round till she could hardly see the front pair of carriers tramping ahead or even Vocco beside her on his horse; fog concealing all the wide prospect of the levels south of Rome, fog so thick that they positively groped their way through the towns along the road, fog so dense that she could not discern the gradations by which afternoon melted into evening and dusk into darkness. When they were clear of the city Vocco ranged his horse alongside the litter and expostulated with Brinnaria, talking Greek that the bearers might not understand. “The best thing you can do,” he said, “is to give up this harebrained adventure and merely swing round through the suburbs for some hours and return to the Atrium by some other gate.” “Not I,” she replied in her hardest tone. “How do you expect to succeed in speaking to Almo?” he asked. “I leave that to you,” she said; “you must manage to see the Dictator of Aricia and tell him that you have with you a lady in a litter who must speak to the challenger before the fight.” “I’ll attempt the commission,” said Vocco, “and I’ll do my utmost, but I hold it impossible.” “In any case,” spoke Brinnaria, “I keep on even if I have to expose myself and be recognized in Aricia.” Vocco gave up the effort to influence her. The roads joining the Appian Way were paved with similar blocks of the same sort of stone. In the fog they went wrong three several times where side-roads branched off at a thin angle. In each case they failed to discover their mistake until they had gone on for some distance; in each case they had to retrace their steps for fear of getting wholly lost if they tried a cross-road; in each case they wasted much time. Twice the leading bearers were all but trampled on by the recklessly driven horses of careless drivers. Both times the mix-up delayed them. Just beyond Bovillae they had a third collision, in which one pole of the litter was snapped and two of the bearers injured. It barely missed resulting in a free-fight. All of Vocco’s tact was needed to allay the feelings on both sides. By great good luck he succeeded in getting a substitute litter-pole from a near-by inn without too much publicity. The delays caused by missing the road and by collisions had cut down the margin of time they had hoped for at Aricia. This last misfortune delayed them so much that it seemed unlikely that they could reach the Grove until midnight.