When he had slipped into his blue cotton tunic, which reached just to his knees, leaving bare his stout brown legs, he went into his mother’s room and plunged his head into a copper basin of water standing ready for his use.  Shaking the drops from his black curls, he hastened on to the kitchen for his porridge.  His grandfather was already there, sitting in his large chair, mumbling half-heard words to himself, while his daughter-in-law dipped out his breakfast from a pot hung over a small fire laid frugally in the middle of the wide, stone hearth.  Marcus went up to him and kissed his forehead before he threw his arms around the neck of the big white sheep-dog which had leaped forward as he entered.  His mother smiled out of her tired eyes as she gave him his morning portion, and then began to wrap up in a spotless napkin the dry bread and few olives which were to be his lunch in the pasture.  When the last bit of hot porridge and the cup of goat’s milk had been finished, he kissed her hand, gave the signal to the impatient dog, and ran across the courtyard to the fold where his meagre flock awaited their release.  The sky was turning pink and gold, the sweet air of dawn filled his nostrils and, in spite of his mother’s forgetfulness, he knew that on this day of all days in the year Good Fortune might be met by mortals face to face.  As he and his dog marshalled the sheep and goats out of the gate, he turned happily toward the long, hard road which to him was but a pathway to his upland pasture and his Lady’s shrine.

His mother came to the gate and watched the springing step with which he met the day.  Her most passionate desire was that he might, throughout his life, be spared the sorrow, the disillusionment and the exhaustion which were her daily portion.  But what chance was there of such a desire being fulfilled?  A cry from the house, half frightened, half peevish, called her back from dreams to duties.

Marcus was the last child of a long line of independent farmers.  When he was born his father was sharing with his grandfather the management of a prosperous estate.  But before Marcus could talk plainly the crash had come.  It seemed incredible that the Emperor in Rome should have known anything about the owners of a farm in Como.  But Domitian’s evil nature lay like a blight over the whole empire, and his cruelty, mean-spirited as well as irrational, was as likely to touch the low as the high.  Angered by some officer’s careless story of an insolent soldier’s interview with Marcus’s grandfather, he used a spare moment to order the confiscation of the rich acres and the slaves of the farm, and the imprisonment of their owner.  The imprisonment had been short, as no one was concerned to continue it after Domitian’s death.  But it had been long enough to break the victim’s spirit and hasten his dotage.  By this time he knew almost nothing of what went on around him.  He did not know that Domitian had been killed and that at last