When he finished eating and his face quieted as he stood
there silent, gazing at something out of our sight, all at once,
simultaneously, I gripped Agathemer and he gripped me. The fellow was
Caulonius Pelops, two years before secretary to the overseer of my uncle's
estate near Consentia in Bruttium. He had run away not long before my
uncle's death.
I stared at him, revolving in my mind the difference of the attitude of
mind towards runaway slaves of a former master who catches sight of a
runaway from his estates and of the same being while pretending himself to
be a runaway. I could have laughed out loud at the contrast between the
feelings towards Pelops which I felt surge up in me and the feelings I
hoped for towards me, say in Tarrutenus Spinellus.
Pelops, of course, knew me perfectly, knew Agathemer as well, would
recognize either of us at sight. Therefore, if we were now discovered, we
saw lost all that we had thought to gain and thought we had gained by our
crawl through the drain pipe and the other features of our escape up to
now. If Pelops set eyes on me, he, at least, would know that I was yet
alive, he might tell all the band; if he told them, any one of them, even
if not he himself, might inform the authorities and put new life into the
search for me, if it had not been abandoned, or revive it if it had; put
every spy in Italy on the alert to catch me: or even betray me to the
nearest magistrate.
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