“Ha, ha, ha, young cut-throat!  I wondered how long this would last on your part!  Well, now I must take you to Falto, to get the beginning of your deserts.”

“Are you mad, fellow?” bawled Agias, while the porter, grasping him by the one hand, and the dim lamp by the other, dragged him into the house.  “Do you know who I am? or what my business is?  Do you want to have your master murdered?”

“Perpol! Not in the least.  That’s why I do as I do.  Tell your story to Falto. Eho! What’s that you’ve got under your cloak?” And he pounced upon a small dagger poor Agias had carried as a precaution against eventualities.  “I imagine you are accustomed to use a little knife like this.”  And the fellow gave a gleeful chuckle.

It was in vain that Agias expostulated and tried to explain.  The porter kept him fast as a prisoner, and in a few moments by his shouts had aroused the whole sleeping household, and stewards, freedmen, and slaves came rushing into the atrium.  Candelabra blazed forth.  Torches tossed.  Maids screamed.  Many tongues were raised in discordant shout and question.  At last order was in some measure restored.  Agias found himself before a tribunal composed of Falto, the subordinate villicus,[111] as chief judge, and two or three freedmen to act in capacity of assessors.  All of this bench were hard, grey-headed, weazened agriculturists, who looked with no very lenient eye upon the delicate and handsome young prisoner before them.  Agias had to answer a series of savagely propounded questions which led he knew not whither, and which he was almost too bewildered to answer intelligently.  The true state of the case only came over him by degrees.  These were the facts.  Drusus had known that there was a conspiracy against his life, and had taken precautions against poisoning or being waylaid by a small band of cut-throats such as he imagined Ahenobarbus might have sent to despatch him.  He had not expected an attack on the scale of Dumnorix’s whole band; and he had seen no reason why, accompanied by the trusty Mamerci and Cappadox, he should not visit his Lanuvian farm.  The whole care of guarding against conspirators had been left to Marcus Mamercus, and that worthy ex-warrior had believed he had taken all needed precautions.  He had warned the porter and the other slaves and freedmen to be on the lookout for suspicious characters, and had let just enough of the plot—­as it was known to him—­leak out, to put all the household on the qui vive to apprehend any would-be assassin of their beloved young master.  But with that fatuity which often ruins the plans of “mice and men,” he had failed to inform even his subordinate Falto of the likelihood of Agias arriving from Rome.  It had obviously been desirable that it should not be bruited among the servants that Cornelia and Drusus were still communicating, and when Agias was haled into the atrium, his only identification was by some over-zealous slave, who declared that the prisoner belonged to the familia of Lentulus Crus, the bitter foe of their master.