"We went on over the next bridge past the entrance to the south, and I
felt more and more that Dromanus was right and I was wrong, and yet I grew
more and more stubborn. When we passed the sixth bridge and I saw the
stream getting bigger and turning to the left, I knew I was wrong. At the
crossroads I realized we were at the entrance to Villa Vedia, but I would
not give up, I took the left-hand turn and went down stream. Beyond the
first bend in the road we found ourselves approaching a long, straggling,
one-street village of tall, narrow stone houses along the eastern bank of
the little river. By the road, just before the first house, watching five
goats, was a boy, a boy with a crooked twitching face.

"'The village idiot,' I put in. 'They can never let him out of sight and
he is always beside the road.'

"He was not too big an idiot to tell us it was Vediamnum."

"He was enough of an idiot," I said, "to forget you, and your question the
next minute. The boy is almost a beast."

"He had enough sense to tell us the name of the village," Tanno retorted,
"and I had to acknowledge to Dromanus he was right, and so we turned
round. When we were hardly more than out of sight of Vediamnum we met
another party, a respectable-looking man, much like a farm bailiff, on
horseback, and two slaves afoot. I had not seen them before, and they,
apparently, had not previously seen us. The rider asked, very decently,
whose was the party. I treated them as I had the others.

"'My master is asleep,' I said again. (It was not such an improbable lie
that time, for the road by Vediamnum is pretty good.) 'I have the honor to
escort Mamercus Satronius Sabinus.'