‘Do you feel able to talk?’ asked the captain as he entered.

‘I am quite restored,’ was the reply of a man sitting up in the bed.  ‘The fever has passed.’

‘So much for the wisdom of physicians!’ exclaimed Venantius with a laugh.  ’That owl-eyed Aesernian who swears by Aesculapius that he has studied at Constantinople, Antioch, and I know not where else, whispered to me that you would never behold to-day’s sunset.  I whispered to him that he was an ass, and that if he uttered the word plague to any one in the house, I would cut his ears off.  Nevertheless, I had you put into this out-of-the-way room, that you might not be disturbed by noises.  Who’—­he sniffed—­’has been burning perfumes?’

’My good fellow Felix.  Though travel-worn and wounded, he has sat by me all the time, and would only go to bed when I woke up with a cool forehead.’

’A good fellow, indeed.  His face spells honesty.  I can’t say so much for that of a man I have just been talking with—­a messenger of your friend Marcian.’

The listener started as though he would leap out of bed.  A rush of colour to his cheeks banished the heavy, wan aspect which had partly disguised him, and restored the comely visage of Basil.  A messenger from Marcian? he exclaimed.  With news for him?  And, as if expecting a letter, he stretched forth his hand eagerly.

‘He has nothing, that I know of, for you,’ said the captain.  ’If he tells the truth, he is charged with a message for the king.’

‘Is it Sagaris—­a Syrian slave?’

’A Syrian, by his looks; one I remember to have seen with Marcian a year ago.’

’Sagaris, to be sure.  Then you can trust him.  He has the eye of his race, and is a prating braggart, but Marcian has found him honest.  I must see him, Venantius.  Will you send him to me, dear lord?’

Venantius had seated himself on a chair that was beside the bed; he wore a dubious look, and, before speaking again, glanced keenly at Basil.

‘Did you not expect,’ he asked, ’to meet Marcian in the king’s camp?’

’My last news from him bade me go thither as fast as I could, as he himself was leaving Rome to join the king.  I should have gone a little out of my road to visit his villa near Arpinum, on the chance of hearing news of him there; but our encounter with the marauders drove me too far away.’

‘So much,’ said Venantius, ’I gathered from your talk last night, when you were not quite so clear-headed as you are now.  What I want to discover is whether this Syrian has lied to me.  He declares that he left Marcian in Rome.  Now it happens that some of our men, who were sent for a certain purpose, yesterday, along the Latin Way, came across half a dozen horsemen, riding westward, and as their duty was, learnt all they could from them.  These six fellows declared themselves servants of the bishop of Praeneste, and said that they had just been convoying a Roman noble and a lady to a villa not far from Arpinum.  And the noble’s name—­they had it, said they, from his own servants at the villa, where they had passed a night—­was Marcian.’