Now they were reviling each other, each claiming a larger
proportion of the coins than he had.
Here was a present from Mercury, indeed. It was a matter of no difficulty
to crawl out of our hole, to approach Carex and Junco, as they called each
other, to pluck their daggers from their sheaths and to render the
highwaymen harmless, to pull them from their saddles, tie their hands with
the lashings of their saddle-bags and to gag them with strips torn from
their tunics; for they were too drunk to know that they were being
attacked; so drunk that each, as we dragged him from his horse, fancied
that the other was assaulting him and expostulated at such unfair behavior
on the part of a pal. So drunk were they that both were snoring before we
tied their feet with more strips torn from their tunics.
Like sacks we hauled them out of the moonlight, into the shadow of the
tomb and then stripped them except of their tunics, fitted on ourselves
the accoutrements they had stolen, and thrust them, trussed, gagged,
snoring and helpless, into the hole where we had taken shelter.
On horseback we rode like couriers, full gallop, passed Loria before the
first hint of dawn showed through the moonlight and, about half way
between Fregena and Alsium turned aside into a lovely little grove about
an old shrine of Ops Consiva, a grove whose beauty and the openness of
whose tree-embowered, grass-carpeted spaces was plain even by the
moonlight.
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