Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire

by Edward Lucas White

  CHAPTER X

  ESCAPE

  At Tibur I put up at a clean little inn I had known of since boyhood, butwhich I had never before entered or even seen, so that I felt safe thereand reasonably sure to pass as a traveller of no rank whatever. Myknowledge of country ways, too, enabled me to behave like a landedproprietor of small means.

  After a hearty lunch I pushed boldly on up the Valerian Highway andcovered the twenty-two miles between Tibur and Carseoli without visiblytiring my mount. He was no more winded nor lathered than any traveller'shorse should be at the end of a day on the road. At Carseoli I again knewof a clean, quiet inn, and there I dined and slept.

  Thence I intended to follow the rough country roads along the Tolenus.Stream-side roads are always bad, so I allowed two days more in which toreach home, and I could hardly have done it quicker. The night after Ileft Carseoli I camped by a tributary of the Tolenus in a very prettylittle grove. From Carseoli on the weather was fine.

  About the third hour of the day, on the fifth day before the Kalends ofSeptember, of a fair, bright morning, I came to my own estate. On the roadnearing it I had met no one. I met no one along the woodland tracksleading into my property from that side: on my estate I met no one savejust as I was about to enter my villa. Then I encountered Ofatulenus,bailiff of the Villa Farm. He, of course, was amazed to see me. I bade himmention to no one, not even to his wife, that I had returned home.

  "Be secret!" I enjoined.

  He nodded.

  I believed he would be dumb. Give me a Sabine to keep a secret; I'd backany Sabine against any other sort of human being.

  Ofatulenus took my horse and swore that no one outside of the stableshould know it was there or suspect it. I told him to lock the trappingsin the third locker in my harness-room, which locker I knew should beempty.

  I got from the stable to my villa without encountering any human being.Outside I found Agathemer, as I had hoped I would, sunning himself on theterrace.

  He was even more amazed than Ofatulenus and began to exclaim. I silencedhim and questioned him as to his health. He told me that his back wasentirely healed and that, while any effort still caused him not a littlepain, he was capable of the customary activities of his normal life.

  I then told him why I had returned home. He listened in silence, exceptthat he here and there put in a query when I omitted some detail in myexcitement.

  When he understood my situation thoroughly he asked:

  "And what do you propose to do?"

  "I propose," I said, "to live here unobtrusively, visiting no one,receiving no one and, by all the means in our power, arranging that as fewpersons as possible may know of my presence here. There is not thefaintest scintilla of hope in my doing anything whatever. But if I merelyexist without calling attention to my existence there may be some hope forme. No man accused as I am is ever allowed an opportunity to clearhimself: but it has often happened that, by keeping away from Rome for atime, a man in my situation has given his friends a chance to use theirinfluence in his behalf, to gain the ear of someone powerful at Court, toget an unbiassed hearing for what they had to say, to prove his completeinnocence and rehabilitate him. Vedia and Tanno will do all they can forme. I have hosts of friends, not a few of whom will aid Vedia and Tanno asfar as they are able. By keeping quiet here I shall give my friends achance to save me, if I can be saved. If not, I shall here await suchorders as may be sent me, or my arrest, if I am to be seized."

  "Is that your whole plan?" Agathemer queried.

  "All," I said.

  "May I speak?" he asked. "May I speak out my full mind?"

  "Certainly!" I agreed. "Speak!"

  "If you stay here as you propose," he said, "you will be arrested notlater than tomorrow and haled to your death, if not butchered at sight. Atmost the centurion in charge might allow you an hour in which to commitsuicide. But if you remain here inactive your death is certain, you willnever see two sunrises.

  "But I agree with you that your friends will do what they can and Iheartily believe that Opsitius and Vedia will move sky, earth and sea andHades beneath all, as far as their powers go, to save you. If they haveany chance of succeeding they will need more time than Perennis will givethem. If you stay here you will be dead before they can so much as layplans to gain them the ear of Saoteros and Anteros or some other Palacefavorite, let along groping through all the complicated intriguesnecessary to arrange for an audience with the Emperor when he might be ina compliant humor.

  "Your plan means certain death for you. I think I can save you if you willput yourself in my hands. Will you?"

  "I most certainly will," I said, "and without reservation. If you thinkyou can save me, tell me what you want me to do and I shall do it. I shallfollow your suggestions implicitly."

  "Well," said Agathemer, "since remaining here means certain death andsince there seems a chance of final salvation for you through the effortsof your friends and especially those of Opsitius and Vedia, since theywill need plenty of time to save you, if you can be saved, from everypoint of view the right course of action is not merely inaction, notmerely hiding, but an immediate and complete disappearance. If you arefound you will be ordered to kill yourself or will be put to death. If youcannot be found you cannot be killed or made to kill yourself. Since youcannot be found you will stay alive until you can be rehabilitated withthe Emperor. If that cannot be done or is not done, at least you will bealive. My deduction is, disappear at once and completely. You have manytimes, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor orsmall farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without beingrecognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt inearnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with,vanish from here at once and completely."

  "But how?" I queried.

  "If you are to disappear," said Agathemer, "why should I waste time inexplaining how. Let us disappear together, leaving no trace and let us doit at once."

  "But," I cried, "I could never consent to anything like that! You are notin any danger. You will be manumitted by my will and you can live safely,comfortably and at ease. Why should I drag you into I know not whatmiseries, hardships and privations along with me? Tell me what to do and Iwill proceed to do it. But do you stay here."

  "If I told you my plan," said Agathemer, "you could not carry it outalone. My scheme for your escape and vanishment pivots on my disappearingalong with you. If you agree, as I beg that you will, we shall both besafe, I hope and trust; alive, able to return here if it can be arranged,able to live elsewhere, somehow, if it cannot be arranged. If you refuseyour assent, I shall die with you or soon after you; I am resolute not tosurvive you."

  "I agree," I said. "I am under your orders henceforth, not you undermine."

  Agathemer at once guided me into the house and upstairs to his rooms, forhe inhabited the guest-suite next my rooms, which had been my uncle's.

  "The first thing to do," he said, "is for both of us to eat heartily, forwe do not know when we shall eat again. I have been choicy and whimmyabout my eating since I came back here and mostly my meals have revoltedme and I have left the _triclinium_ practically unfed, whereas I haveoften been seized with imperative hunger between meals. I have anoverabundant supply of all sorts of tempting cold viands up here."

  And, in fact, in the room he used as a reading and writing room, on a sidetable, I found an inviting array of cold meats, jellies, cakes, and fancybreads, with an assortment of wines. We ate till we could eat no more,masticating our food carefully and taking wine in moderation.

  Then Agathemer put up a liberal supply of bread and relishes in a smalllinen bag, obliterated all traces of our meal and presence and went intohis dressing-room, where he stripped stark naked and rubbed himself downwith a rough towel, carefully disposing of his garments in his wardrobes.

  From one of his tables he took a small silver case containing flint, steeland tinder. Then we went into my rooms, where he stripped me, rubbed medown, and disposed
of my garments as he had of his. My wallet he tookpains to hide in the bottom of a chest, after emptying it and putting thecontents about so that each article was hidden in a different place andnone could be connected with the others or with the wallet. The littlehorn case with flint and steel he retained.

  The ante-room to what had been my uncle's bed-room and was now mine, hadon its walls trophies of hunting-spears and other weapons of the chase.Agathemer selected two knives for killing wounded stags, dependableimplements, blade and shank one piece of fine steel, the handles of stag-horn, fastened on with copper rivets.

  With the bag of food, the two knives and the two tinder boxes we went upmy uncle's private stair to his library and reading room.

  My uncle had had his own ideas as to nearly everything, usually much atvariance with other people's ideas. As to building his ideas, perhaps,were less aberrant than his opinions on other subjects, but, certainly hewas as tenacious of them as of his other notions.

  He held, in the first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor ofany house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He wasequally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for abuilding to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three ormore stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of sillyextravagance and of a desire to appear different from one's neighbors. Hisvilla, therefore, was of two stories only.

  But, on the other hand, he loved fresh air, light, and wide prospects fromhis windows; also he spent most of his daylight reading or writing, orboth. To gratify to the full all his chief tastes at once he included inthe plans of his villa a sort of tower, at the northwest corner, risingwell above the remainder of the structure, so that the floors of its thirdstory were on a level higher than that of the ridge-poles of the roofs ofthe other parts of the villa and from the wide windows of its rooms therewas an unobstructed view over the tiles of the villa upon the farm-buildings and beyond them across the fields to the woodlands and theforested eastern and southern horizon as well as a fine outlook down thevalley northward and across it westward.

  In this third story of this tower he housed his library and there he spentmost of his time. It was reached by three stairs. One was connected withthe villa in general and was used by him when going down to meals in his_triclinium_, or when escorting visitors up to his library, as hesometimes did with his particular favorites; and this stair was also usedby such servants as he might summon to him while in his library or asmight have to go up there to attend to it in his absence. The second stairconnected with his living-rooms on the second floor, which rooms lookednorthwestward, as he detested being waked early by the rays of the risingsun and loved basking in the mellow radiance of afternoon sunlight. Thethird stair is not easy to describe and was one of my uncle's oddesteccentricities. It was inside a sort of minor tower built against thetower in which his library was set aloft, which minor tower extended farup towards the sky, like a great chimney. What was the primary purpose ofthis minor tower I shall explain later. In it, however, was a narrow,cramped, spiral stair, unlit by any window or loop-hole, unconnected withthe second or first floor of the villa, opening at the top into thelibrary and at the bottom into a cellar, a cellar so far down the hillsidethat its vault was below the level of the floors of the cellars under thevilla in general. This stair my uncle had had constructed to enable him toapply his idea that a master could ensure the diligence of his tenants andslaves only if he was known to be in the habit of coming upon themunexpectedly at any hour of the day, only if they never knew when he mightappear and so were spurred to continual diligence for fear he might catchthem idling. For my uncle, though he habitually spent his entire daylightin his library, might at any hour slip down this stair, slip out onto thenorthwestern slope from the villa through a door locked to all but him andof which he kept the key, or might slip out southeastward or southwestwardor northeastward, through similar doors on the ground floor, reached bypassages built between the many cellars of the upper level of cellarsunder the ground floor of the villa. By this plan and by popping outsometimes many times a day, sometimes after an interval of many days, hekept his underlings alert.

  My uncle's tastes in respect to books were as peculiar as in all otherrespects. He had a really magnificent library, including all the Greekpoets, all our own, and other noble works of literature, such as thehistorians in both the Greek and Latin tongues; the orators, and thewriters on painting, sculpture, architecture and music.

  But he paid more attention to his personal fads. He had a creditablecollection of all works on divination, a similarly inclusive assemblage ofworks on the theory of government, and an almost complete array of thewritings of the Emperors, from the Divine Julius to the Divine Aurelius,whose meditations he extolled.

  But he extolled above all other Princes and authors the Divine Julius.

  "Caius Julius Caesar," he was never tired of saying, "was, in allrespects, the greatest man who ever lived on earth. He was also thegreatest author earth has ever produced. His poems, his mimes, hiscomedies, his dramas, compare favorably with the best of their kind. Hisaccounts of his wars, whether against the Gauls or against his domesticadversaries, are models of narration, of lucidity, of terseness and ofstyle. His astronomy is the best manual of that subject in Latin. Hisworks on Engineering surpass anything of their kind in clearness andpreserve for the benefit of future generations more useful and originalideas than ever before came from the brain of any one man. His works ondivination, particularly that on Auspices, excel everything previouslywritten on that most important of all human arts.

  "But his two books against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful thatany man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his ownhand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader,so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions andcontentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, inthe course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel ofLatinity, in a style not only pure and impeccable, but glowing andcharming, is astonishing. But it is downright miraculous that he shouldhave embodied in it the whole theory of government with all its principlesmarshalled in their array with the most perfect subordination ofconsiderations of lesser importance to main principles. The twoAnticatones contain all that a ruler or any minister of a ruler need knowto guide him aright in his tasks. The First Book displays a completetheory of internal policy, the Second of external policy. The two togetherform a whole which is the most brilliant product of Rome's literary andpolitical genius."

  In accordance with his high esteem for Caesar's masterpiece he hadpossessed himself of a beautiful copy of it, written by the celebratedcalligrapher Praxitelides, upon papyrus of the finest quality. It was inseven rolls, each book of Caesar's text occupying two rolls, the index afifth, and the commentaries of grammarians two more. The rollers insidethe rolls were of Nubian ivory, their ends carved into pine cones, each ofthe fourteen representing the cone of a different variety of pine. Eachroll was enclosed in a copper cylinder made accurately to be bothwatertight and airtight. The seven cylinders were housed in an ebony case,inlaid with mother of pearl. I have never seen any literary work morebeautifully enshrined.

  When Agathemer and I were in the library he shut and locked the door atthe top of my uncle's private stair, as he had the door at the bottom ofit. The two keys he hid far apart, where neither was at all likely to befound easily or soon. He had laid the knives, tinder-boxes and bag of foodon a table. He went to the case containing my uncle's most highly prizedtreasures. From it he took the ebony box, opened it and took out two ofthe cylinders. From these he removed the rolls embodying the grammarians'comments. These rolls he put back in the box, shut it, returned it to thecase and closed the case.

  The two cylinders he had laid on the table by the things which he hadbrought up stairs. Inside each cylinder he placed a knife, a tinder-box,and a selection of the food. The bag, with what remained of the food, hetied up again. He handed me one cylinder.r />
  "Now," he said, "we are prepared to escape. My idea is to leave no traceof how we leave this villa, to have no one see us leave, to have nothingwith us which could identify us after we have left. We are to go down thesecret stair, crawl out through the big lower drain pipe, hide in thebushes till dark, take to the woods, hide by day, creep northward bynight, and, if we succeed in reaching a district where no one wouldrecognize us, press on northward boldly, passing ourselves off as runawayslaves if anyone encounters us."

  "We'd be locked up as runaway slaves," I said, "advertised, sold to thehighest bidder if unclaimed and henceforth kept in slavery."

  "I'm in slavery now," said Agathemer. "You, if kept in slavery, would atleast be alive and in no danger of being recognized."

  "Let us go," said I.

  We looked at each other and burst out laughing. We made a sufficientlyabsurd spectacle, each stark naked, each holding a copper cylinder, as westood in that elegant and luxurious room. According to the fashion of thetime, which aped the ways of the young Emperor, we wore our hairmoderately long and as both had hair naturally curly, were perfectly instyle as to hair. Our beards, also, we wore clipped but not shaved, andlong enough to show a tendency to curl, as the Emperor wore his.

  Our laugh over I gave a farewell glance about my little-used library. Itwas then about the fifth hour. Agathemer gazing rather outside at thelandscape than inside at the room remained frozen stiff, staring northwarddown the valley.

  "We are barely in time," he said. "Mercury is with us and Fortune."

  "Before I left Rome," I said, "I prayed to Fortune and sacrificed toMercury."

  "Time well spent," he said. "Look there!"

  Peering where he pointed I saw, where the road was first visible in thedistance, fully two miles away, a dozen or more horsemen, manifestly, evenat that distance, of military bearing: I caught, against the sunrays, agleam of crimson and a glint of gold; I conjectured a detail of PraetorianGuards coming to arrest me or to put me out of the way.

  Agathemer opened the upper door of the secret stair, which unlike mostdoors, could be locked on either side, for my uncle always wanted to lockthe doors he used, whichever way he passed through them. After we hadpassed this door Agathemer closed it behind us, and, as we stood in thepitch dark, locked it.

  We groped our way down the dizzying turns of the steep stair, Agathemergoing first and, at the bottom, whacking his knee-cap on the lower door.This he unlocked and I found myself in a dim-lit cellar which I hadvisited but twice before. Agathemer locked the stair-door behind us.

  Now the minor tower, in which was the spiral stair, was built as a vent tocarry up into the air, far above the roofs of the villa, any miasma,effluvium or exhalation from the drainage-water of the villa's baths,kitchen and latrines. On the subject of harmful vapours from drains myuncle was fanatical and to bear out his contentions he quoted from theworks of many celebrated philosophers and physicians, including those ofGalen.

  Pursuant with his notions as to how to get rid of the exhalations fromdrainage and to make certain that no whiff of any such vapours ever foundits way up any offset into his kitchen or any latrine or bathroom, he hadbuilt in this small high tower a shaft reaching its top and full six feetsquare all the way up. At its bottom it widened out into a chamber fullytwelve feet square, carried down below the level of the cellar floor toform a cemented tank, vat, cistern or cesspool fully as deep as it waswide. The outfall from this trap was by a terra-cotta pipe of considerablesize, its opening at such a point that the drain-water in the trap neverreached higher than a foot or so below the level of the cellar floor. Thevarious drainage-pipes from different parts of the villa were so led intothis trap-room that their lower ends were always under water, so that noexhalations could ever pass up any of them.

  To the bottom of the trap settled the solid matter and sediment from thedrainage-water. The trap was cleaned by slaves so often that the ooze init never rose high enough to escape down the outfall pipe and befoul theBran Brook. For cleaning out the trap-room had an outer door, of heavy,solid oak, carefully locked, which when opened enabled the slavesentrusted with this task to dredge or bale or scoop out the filth andconvey it off to be used as garden manure. There was also an inner door,as heavy and solid as the other, opening from the cellar, which enabled myuncle to inspect the trap at his convenience. This door Agathemer opened.

  I peered in and, after my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, descriedthe opening of the outfall drain opposite me. It was large enough for leanmen like me and Agathemer to crawl through, but certainly barely largeenough. I could see, after some moments, the lower ends of the drainpipes, two dozen or more, dipping into the foul liquid which filled thecistern. It was very foul, for since my uncle's death the cleaning out ofthe trap had been neglected and the ooze came almost to the top of thewater.

  Agathemer hunted about the cellar, found some bits of stone about the sizeof apples, put them in the bag of food, tied up its neck again, and threwit into the trap, where it sank out of sight. After it he threw in the twokeys.

  Now was the moment for our plunge into the unknown. Agathemer's planimplied that we must crawl a full furlong through the outfall drain. Wemight be drowned, at any point of the crawl, by a rush of water from thebath-tank. We might suffocate in the foul vapours of the drain. But,plainly, Agathemer had pitched upon our only chance of escape, and we mustescape that way and at once or not at all.

  Agathemer threw the two copper cylinders, one after the other, neatly anddeftly into the mouth of the outfall drain.

  "Now," he said, "one of us must jump for that opening, and must cling toit, his arms inside, his body in the ooze of the trap. The other muststand on the narrow stone ledge inside this door, must contrive to slamthe door behind him so that it will shut fast and stay shut, must then, inthe pitch dark, jump for the shoulders of the other. If the drag of hisweight pulls the other down, both of us will drown in this deep trap inthe vile ooze. If the under man clings on, the upper must crawl over himinto the drain, pass back to him one of the cylinders and then we shall beready for our crawl down. Which goes first?"

  "You choose," said I.

  "Can you slam the door?" Agathemer queried.

  I considered the door, the sill, the ledge inside, the jambs of the door,its edges; stood on the ledge, went through the motions and concluded thatI could slam the door shut and not be knocked off into the ooze by itsimpact or topple off because of the sill's narrowness. I said so.

  "Then I'll go first," said Agathemer. "You are, even yet, far moreimpaired in strength by your beating than I by my flogging. If I camesecond you might not be able to hold on to the opening of the drain. Iknow I can hold on, no matter how much filth is plastered over my head asyou crawl over me. I should not like the idea of defiling your head withfilth in crawling over you. Jump so that your clutching hands just reachmy shoulders; so that your weight will come on me gradually as you sinkinto the ooze. Take your time about crawling over me. Be sure to pass backto me one cylinder."

  Then he drilled me as to the signals he would give me by pinching my feet.When he was sure we both knew them he grinned a wry grin, and made awhimsical boyish gesture with his uplifted right hand, took a carefulstand on the sill, balanced himself and jumped.

  "I'm all right," he called back, "and ready for you."

  Three times I tried to slam that door and failed to shut it. The fourthtime I found myself, my back against the shut door, my toes sticking outover the edge of the stone sill, balanced in the pitch dark on a toonarrow ledge.

  "Lean back against the door," Agathemer called, thickly. "If it gives itis not shut."

  It did not give.

  I said so.

  "Then no one will ever know how we got out," said Agathemer; adding: "Jumpwhen you are ready, but say 'now.'"

  I jumped and my fingers caught his shoulders. He held on. My body sankslowly through the ooze, which gave way with a sickening sliminess, untilI was in contact with Agathemer all the way to my toes. Then I
began totry to crawl up over him. I found it far harder than either of us hadanticipated.

  All slippery as we were with the foul ooze it was a fearful struggle forme to scramble up over him, I slipped back so often. After what seemed anhour of effort and apprehension I had my head, shoulders and most of mybody in the drain and knew I had succeeded. I wriggled forward till I feltmy feet beyond the opening, then about as far ahead, pushing before me thecylinders. When Agathemer touched my foot I pushed a cylinder past my bodyand felt, with my ankle, that he pulled it back.

  After that, escape was a matter of wriggling on down the drain. Andwriggling was not impossible, though excessively difficult and exhausting.The drain was nowhere choked with silt, but all along was furred with oozeand there was more than an inch of ooze along its bottom. In this,hitching myself forward on my elbows by violent contortions, I slippedback almost as much as I heaved forward.

  Agathemer seemed to have as much trouble as I had and to find the effortas exhausting. For he had instructed me that I was not to crawl forwarduntil he pinched my foot. One pinch was to mean "advance," two pinches"rest." More than once he had signalled me to rest.

  Our worst moment came somewhere near half way down the sewer. There Iencountered a cracked drain-pipe, the ragged edge of the broken terra-cotta projecting into the sewer, its point toward me. I wriggled myshoulders by it, though it gouged my shoulder-muscle on that side; but, atmy hips, it stuck into me so that I could not get past it.

  Agathemer, behind, kept pinching my foot, signalling for me to go forward.I bellowed explanations, but could not suppose that he could hear them inthat horrible tube. But he either heard or guessed, he never could be surewhich. Anyhow, he felt that we must get forward or perish. In desperationhe sunk his teeth into the soft part of the inner side of the sole of myleft foot. The pain made me give a convulsive wriggle and I scraped pastthe obstacle, tearing my hip badly in getting clear.

  From there on we wriggled frantically till I could see ahead a round patchof light at the lower outfall of the drain.

  It seemed an age before I reached the opening, but reach it I did. I laythere, my head just inside, panting and guzzling clean air in greatgulping gasps. Agathemer pinched my foot. I slipped out into the oozy poolbelow the outfall, slid out as quietly as I could and kept myselfsubmerged up to my chin, clutching my cylinder with one hand, pullingmyself clear of the drain and keeping my head out of the drainage byholding to the stem of an alder bush growing by the brook's edge.

  I came to rest, the sunlight dazzling my eyes, though the outfall wasshaded by willows above the alders, and looked for Agathemer. He, his facepurple, kept his head inside the sewer and I could see him suck in theclean air in long gasps as I had.

  At that instant there was a squawking above us and, through the alders,came, quacking and flapping their wings, a hundred or more of my uncle'svalued white ducks. Their alarm made me peep through the alder stems. Isaw, not ten yards from my face, the legs of horses, heard their hoofsthud on the roadway, descried men's feet against their bellies, recognizedthe gilded edges of the boot-soles, the make of the boots, the gilt scaleson the kilt-straps, the gilded breast plates, the crimson tunics andshort-cloaks, the gilded sword-sheaths and helmets. There, just above us,was passing the detachment of Praetorian Guards sent to arrest or despatchme.

  They clanked by us, never suspecting our proximity, though the ducksresented our presence in their favorite pool and quacked at usprotestingly. They continued, in fact, to quack at us most of the timeuntil sunset, so that both of us were in an agony of dread for fear thatsome passer-by might notice their voluble expressions of displeasure andmight take a notion to investigate to discover what was exciting theirwrath.

  But no one was attracted by the ducks' noise and, if anyone passed up ordown the road we, where we were, did not know it.

  We talked, at intervals, in whispers. Agathemer said that he had beenbarely grazed by the broken drain-pipe and hardly noticed his scratches.I, on the other hand, was in great pain from the gouge along my hip, andhardly less pained by the tear in my shoulder. The water, under which Ihad to keep up to my chin, dulled the pain of my wounds, but chilled metill my teeth chattered, though the weather was hot; so hot in fact, thatthe sunrays on my head seemed to scorch my hair, even through the willowsand alders. I was devoutly glad when the sunrays became more slanting andthe daylight began to wane, and the ducks, still quacking protestingly,departed.