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

by Edward Lucas White

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE LONELY HUT

  Some time before noon we were threading a barely visible track not farbelow the crest of the spur, a track bordered and overshadowed bychestnuts and beeches, but chestnuts and beeches intermingled with not afew pines and firs, when, out of the bushes on our left hand, from the upslope above us, appeared a large mouse-colored Molossian dog, very leanand starved looking. I first saw his big, square-jowled, short-muzzledhead peering out between some low cornel bushes, his brown eyes regardingme questioningly.

  He fawned on me, of course, and I made friends with him, fondled him,pulled his ears and played with him a while.

  Agathemer tartly enquired whether we really had time to waste onskylarking with strange dogs. I laughed, picked up my wallet, and startedto follow him as he swung round and strode on, ordering the dog to go backhome, a command which, from me, almost always won instant compliance anddisembarrassed me of any casual roadside friends.

  But the dog did not obey. He pawed at me, whined, and caught my cloak inhis teeth, tugging at it and whining. I could not induce him to let go,could not shake him off, and was much puzzled. Agathemer, impatient andirritated, halted again and urged our need of haste.

  After exhausting every wile by which I had been accustomed to rid myselfof too fond animals, I began to realize that the dog did not want tofollow us, did not want us to remain where we were and go on playing withhim, but, as plainly as if he spoke Latin, he was begging us to accompanyhim somewhere.

  I said to Agathemer:

  "I'm going with this dog; come along."

  He remonstrated.

  I declared that I had an intuition that to follow the dog was the rightthing to do. Agathemer, contemptuous and reluctant, yielded. The dog ledus along an all but undistinguishable track through densely growing trees,up steep slopes and out into a flattish glade or clearing at the brow ofthe slope, overhung by merely a few hundred feet of wooded mountain sideand bare cliffs to the crest. The clearing was clothed in soft, late,second-growth grass, and had plainly been mown at haying time and pasturedon since. In it we found some well-built, well-thatched farm-buildings: asheepfold, a goatpen, a cowshed, a strongly built structure like a granaryor store-house, another like a repository for wine-jars and oil-jars;hovels such as all mountain farms have for slave-quarters and a house orcabin little better than a hut, mud-walled, like the other buildings, butnew thatched. It was nearly square and had no ridge-pole, the four slopesof the roof running together, at the top, yet not into a point, but as ifthere were a smoke-vent: in fact I thought I saw a suggestion of smokerising from the peak of the roof.

  To this hut the dog led us. The heavy door of weathered, rough-hewn oakwas shut, but, when I pushed it, proved to be unfastened. I found myselflooking into a largish room, roofed with rough rafters from which hungwhat might have been hams, flitches and cheeses. It was mud-walled and hada floor of beaten earth, in which was a sand-pit, nearly full of ashes andwith a small fire smouldering in the middle of it. Opposite me was a roughplank partition with two doors in it, both open. Against the partition,between the doors, hung bronze lamps, iron pots and pottery jars. The roomwas dim, lighted only from the door, in which I stood, and from the narrowsmoke-vent overhead.

  By the fire, on their hands and knees, and apparently poking at it, eachwith a bit of wood, or about to lay the bits of wood on it, were twolittle girls, shock-headed, barefoot and bare-legged, clad only in coarsetunics of rusty dark wool. I am not accurate as to children's ages: I tookthese girls for seven and five; but they may have been six and four oreight and six. At sight of us they scrambled to their feet and fledthrough one of the doors, one shrieking, the other screaming:

  "Mamma! Mamma! Strange men! Strange men!"

  In her panic she did not attempt to shut the door behind her and bolt it,both of which, as I afterwards discovered, she might have done.

  No other voices came to our ears and I followed the children into the rearroom in which they had taken refuge. It was totally dark, except for whatlight found its way through its door, and was cramped and small and halffilled by a Gallic bed. I had never seen a Gallic bed before. Such a bedis made like the body of a travelling-carriage or travelling litter,entirely encased in panelling, topped off with a sort of flat roof ofpanelling, and with sliding panels above the level of the cording, so thatthe occupants can shut themselves in completely; a structure which looksto a novice like a device for smothering its occupants, but which is awelcome retreat and shelter on cold, windy, winter nights, as I havelearned by later experience. As this was my first sight of one I wasamazed at it.

  Usually, as I learned later, such a bedstead is piled up with feather-beds, so that the occupant is much above the level of the top edge of thelower front on which the panels slide. But this bed was poorly providedwith mattresses and I had to stare down into it to descry the children'smother, who lay like a corpse in a coffin, but half buried in bedding andquilts, only her face visible. She was certainly alive, for her breathingwas loud and stertorous; but she was, quite certainly, unconscious.Between the shrieking children, who clung to the frame of the bed, I spoketo her and assured her that we were friends. She gave no sign ofunderstanding me, of hearing me, of knowing of my presence; but myrepeated assurances quieted the elder girl, who not only ceased screamingbut endeavored to calm her little sister.

  Seeing her so sensible, I questioned the child. All I could learn from herwas that her father had been away nearly ten days, her mother ill for fiveand insensible for three and their four slaves had run away the daybefore, taking everything they chose to carry off. I then examined theother room which had a similar bed in it, and in which, the child told me,she and her sister slept. She declared that she did not know her mother'sname, that her father never called her anything but "mother"; she alsodeclared that she did not know her father's name, her mother, alwayscalling him "father," as she and her sister did. Her name was Prima andher sister's Secunda.

  As I could not rouse the woman and learned that the slaves had been gonemore than a full day, Agathemer and I went to save the bellowing andbleating stock. We found in the shed two fine young cows with uddersappallingly distended. But our attention was momentarily distracted fromthem by the sight of eight full-sized bronze pails, finer than those atany public well in Reate or Consentia, which hung on pegs by the door,four on each side of it. They were flat-bottomed, bulged, but narrowed atthe rim so that no water would splash out in carrying. The rims wereornamented with chased or cast patterns, scallops, leaves, egg and dartand wall of Troy: four patterns, showing that they were pairs. All hadheavy double handles. We looked for carrying-yokes, but could see none.Such pails, which would be the treasures of any village and the pride ofmost towns, amazed us in this fastness. Glancing at the pails took us lesstime than it does to tell of it. The cows needed us sorely and we eachpicked up one of the suitable earthenware jars which stood inverted justinside the shed door and milked them at once. Agathemer said he thought wewere in time to forestall any serious and permanent harm to them. Buttheir udders were frightfully swelled and blood came with the milk fromone teat of the cow I attended to.

  The sheep were in a worse state than the cows. Not a lamb was visible;besides the ewes there was only a two-year-old ram penned by himself in acorner of the fold. There were eight fine young ewes, in full milk. Aswith one cow, so among these ewes, four gave bloody milk from one teateach, and we milked that onto the earth. We found plenty of emptyearthenware crocks, clean, and turned upside down, in which to save thegood milk.

  The he-goat, a noble young specimen, was penned by himself, like the ram.There were nineteen she-goats, with not a kid anywhere, yet all in fullmilk and far worse off than the ewes. All but two gave bloody milk andthree gave no clean milk. These three I judged might die, but Agathemervowed he could save them.

  When we had finished milking we searched about for water. Towards thenortheast the clearing narrowed and here we came upon a tiny rilltrickling through a fringe of sed
ge. It came from a clear and abundantspring in a cleft of rock against the sharp up slope which rose thereunder the pines. At the lower edge of that part of the clearing, near themargin of the more nearly level ground, just before it plunged over therim of the flat, it was dammed into a drinking pool for the stock. We didnot dare let them out to drink and so laboriously carried water, I fromthe spring and Agathemer from the pond, using each a pair of the bronzepails, pouring the water into the troughs made of hollow logs, which wereset, one to each, in the shed, pen and fold. We kept this up till everygoat and ewe had had her fill, and then watered the he-goat and ram. Thecows, of course, we had watered first. After the watering we gave each cowa feed of mixed barley and millet and then filled with hay all the mangersand racks.

  When we had concluded this exhausting toil we filled the water-jar whichstood in one corner of the cabin and then carried some milk into thehouse, and offered Prima and Secunda whichever they preferred. They choseewe's milk and drank their fill. Prima was much impressed by the dog'sconfidence in me and seemed to give me hers. She said the dog's name wasHylactor. I tried to make the mother drink some cow's milk, but sheswallowed only a few drops which I forced through her teeth by the help ofa small horn spoon which I found on the floor of the outer room.

  Agathemer roused the fire and piled more wood on it. There were no lessthan seven tripods lying about the floor of the cabin, but all roughlymade and of the squat, short-legged pattern which holds a pot barely clearof a low bed of coals; not one was fit to hold a cauldron over a newlymade deep fire of half-caught wood.

  On the tallest of them, or rather on that least squatty, Agathemer set asmall pot, which he filled with fresh water. When he had this where itseemed likely to boil and certain to heat, he ferretted about forsupplies. He found a brick oven with about half a baking of bread in it;medium-sized loaves of coarse wheat bread. Two forked sticks stood in onecorner of the cabin and with one he lifted from its peg in the rafters apartly used flitch of good coarse bacon. There was a jar more than halffull of olive oil by the sticks in the same corner of the cabin. In asmall pot set in the ashes Agathemer stewed some of the onions he lifteddown from the rafters. In the other corner of the cabin was an amphoranearly full of harsh, sour wine. We made a full meal of bread, onions,bacon, olives and some raisins, drinking our fill of the wine. The littlegirls ate heartily with us, now convinced that we were friends andaccepting us as such. They seemed to some extent habituated to theirmother's condition of helplessness and insensibility.

  As soon as we had fed we inspected the place. The glade or clearing wasenclosed all around by the tall trees of a thick primitive forest. Towardsthe up slope and the cliffs below the crest of the mountain the trees wereall pines, firs or such-like dark and somber evergreens. There were a fewof these also on the lower slopes, but there, as along all that rim of theclearing, the forest was mostly of oak, beech, chestnut and other cheerfultrees. Their tops towered far above the verge of the slope and screenedthe clearing all round. Nowhere could we catch sight of any sign of atown, village or farmstead, though there were three several rifts in theforest through which we could see far into the valleys to the eastward.The cliff above the clearing ran nearly from southwest to northeast, sothat the place was well situated towards the sun.

  The cow-shed was divided by a partition and half of it had been used forstabling mules. Agathemer judged that no mule had been in it for about tendays. We inferred that the children's father had taken the mules with himwhen he departed. Over the cow-shed was a loft, well stored with good hay,as were the smaller lofts over the sheds which formed one side of thesheepfold and goat-pen. The hay was not mountain hay, but distinctlymeadow hay, such as is mown in valleys along streams. It was all inbundles, such bundles as are carried on mule-back, two to a mule. This wasqueer; even queerer the absence of any fowls or pigeons, or of any signthat any had ever been about the place. An Umbrian mountain farm withoutpigeons was unthinkable.

  In the granary we found an amazingly large store of excellent barley, butonly two jars of wheat, and that not very good, and neither jar entirelyfull. On the floor were loose piles of turnips, beets and of dried pods ofcoarse beans. There were jars of chick-peas, cow-peas, lentils, beans andmillet, more millet than wheat. From the rafters hung dried bean-bushes,with the pods on; long strings of onions, dried herbs, marjoram, thyme,sage, bay-leaves and other such seasonings, dried peppers, strung like theonions, and bunches of big sweet raisins. Also many rush-mats of driedfigs, the biggest and best of figs, some of them indubitably Caunean figs.On the floor, in heaps, were some hard-headed cabbages, only one or twospoiled. It was a very ample store and we marvelled at it and wonderedwhence it all came and how it came where it was.

  The other store-house amazed us. It was, as we had conjectured, full ofgreat jars; jars of wine, of olive oil, of pickled olives, of pickledfish, of pickled pork, of vinegar, of plums in vinegar, and smaller jarsof honey, sauces and prepared relishes. The rafters were set full ofcornel-wood pegs till they looked like weavers-combs. From the pegs hunghams, flitches, strings of smoked sausage, cheeses of all sizes, smoked soheavily that they appeared mere lumps of soot, and bags of a shapeunfamiliar to both of us. Agathemer knocked one down and opened it. It wasfull of tight packed fish, salted, dried and smoked, a fish of a kindunknown to us.

  There was, along the upper edge of the clearing, under the boughs of thepine trees, a huge pile of trimmed logs of oak, chestnut, pine and fir,with a scarcely smaller heap of cut lengths of boughs and branches. Undera lean-to shed was a small store of cut fire-wood. In a corner of the sameshed were four big cornel-wood mauls and eleven good iron wedges, not oneof them bearing any sign of ever having been used, but appearing as iffresh from the maker's hands. By the woodpile were four even heaviermauls, showing plenty of marks of hard usage and near them or about thewoodpile we found eight rusty wedges.

  We could find no axe, hatchet or any other such tool anywhere about theplace. The logs and six-foot lengths of boughs afforded a lavish supply offuel for two long winters; the cut fire-wood could not be made to keep thefire going ten days.

  The slave-quarters, as I said, were mere hovels, but they were providedwith bedding, quilts, and stores of clothing by no means such as aregenerally used for slaves. Slaves' quilts are mostly old and worn, made ofpatches of woollen or linen cloth all but worn out by previous use; andthen, when torn, patched with a patch on a patch and a patch on that.These quilts were the best of their kind, such as ladies of leisure makefor their own amusement, of squares and triangles of woolen stuff unwornand unsoiled. The mattresses were stuffed with dried grass or sedge,craftily packed to make a soft bed for any sleeper. The pillows were oflambs' wool, as good as the best pillows. And, in a big chest in eachhovel, were good, new, clean tunics, cloaks, rain-cloaks, and with themsandals, shoes, hats, rain-hats and all sorts of clothing, not as if forslaves, but as if for middle-class farmers, prosperous and self-indulgent.

  We were dumbfounded at such abundance in such a place.

  By each bed in the hut was a chest. These we opened and found in bothwomen's clothing; tunics, robes, cloaks and rolls of linen and fine woolenstuffs.

  The woman, although moaning and stirring in her bed, gave no more signs oflife than when we first saw her. Agathemer said, speaking Greek so thechildren would not understand:

  "We must try to save this woman's life. You manage to get the children tofollow you outside and I'll lift her out of the bed, and wash her, put aclean tunic on her, put clean bedding in the bed and put her back in it; Ican do all that handily. She is so ill she will never know."

  We went out in the slave-hovels and chose what bedding seemed suitable andcarried it into the hut. Agathemer had put more fuel on the fire and set abig pot of water on the tripod. We put the bedding in a corner of the hutand selected from the contents of the chests a tunic and some roughtowels, of which there were some in each chest.

  I was not hopeful of being able to wheedle the children; but my firstattempt was a complete
success. I suggested to Prima that she tell me thenames of the sheep and goats and she at once became absorbed ininstructing me. Each had a name, she was certain; but, I found, veryuncertain as to which name belonged to which and not very sure of some ofthe names. Her hesitations and efforts to remember took up so much timethat we were still at the goat-pen, Secunda with one hand clingingconfidingly to mine, when Agathemer called to me from the door of the hut.

  He told me in Greek that he had done all he could for the woman, hadeffaced all traces of his activities and had put the soiled bedding out inthe late sunshine to dry and air. We strolled about the clearing,remarking again that it seemed out of sight from any possible inhabited ortravelled viewpoint. Agathemer fetched a rough ladder he had seen in thecow-shed, set it against the hut, which was highest on the slope, andclimbed to the top of its roof. From there, he said, he could descrynothing in any direction which looked like a town, village, farmstead orbit of highway. The place was well hidden, by careful calculation, forthis could not have come about by accident.

  We peered into each of the buildings and poked about in them, hoping tofind an axe or hatchet, and marvelling that a place so liberally, solavishly, so amazingly oversupplied with hams, flitches, sausages andother such food should show nowhere any trace of the presence of hogs.There was no hog-pen nor any place where one might have been, nor did anypart of the clearing show any signs indicating a former wallow, nor hadany portion of it been rooted up. It was very puzzling.

  As we returned to the house, about an hour before sunset, wesimultaneously uttered, in Greek:

  "Here we stay--"

  "Go on," said I checking.

  "Here we stay," he began again, "until the husband comes home, or, if hedoes not return, until spring."

  "That is my idea, also," I said, "and there is but one drawback."

  "Pooh," said Agathemer, "if we do not find an axe somewhere hereaboutsI'll steal one from a farm if I have to spend two days and a night on thequest."

  We agreed that there was no question but that we must spend the nightwhere we were. The stock, after their long neglect and late milking, wouldbe best left unmilked and unwatered till morning. As we must not leave thewoman unwatched, we must sleep in the hut. We could bring in sedgemattresses and quilts from the hovels and sleep on the earth floor by thefire. When we had agreed on these points we forced some more milk on thesemi-unconscious woman, gave the stock more hay, ate an abundant meal ofbread, oil, sausages broiled over the fire on a spit, olives and raisins;and, soon after sunset, composed ourselves to sleep by the well-coveredfire, leaving open the door into the woman's bedroom, but shutting the twochildren into theirs after telling them by no means to stir until wecalled them in the morning.

  Hylactor curled up outside the cabin door, almost against it, afterAgathemer had convinced him that we would not let him sleep in the hut. Weslept unbrokenly till dawn woke us.

  It was cold before sunrise so high up the mountains. My face felt coldeven inside the hut and by the smouldering fire. I was reluctant to rollout of my quilts. But, what with Agathemer's urgings and my ownrealization of what was required, I did my share of the milking, wateringand feeding of the stock and ate a hearty breakfast. For, as when hidingin Furfur's woods, as when anywhere on our escape, since it was notpossible to eat as if at home and at ease, we ate our fill soon after dawnand again before dark, but during the day we ate nothing. We had fromnecessity already formed the habit of two meals a day, at sunrise andsunset.

  The woman seemed less violently ill than the day before. When we first sawher she had been in the throes of a violent fever and it had lasted untilafter Agathemer bathed her. From then on it seemed to abate, but, when Ilast felt her forehead and hands before we lay down to sleep, she wasstill feverish. When we first went to her in the morning she wasunconscious and as if in a stupor, but showed no signs of fever. She didnot struggle against feeding as on the previous day, but swallowed, aspoonful at a time, as much milk as Agathemer thought good for her.

  When we had done what seemed necessary Agathemer suggested that I remainby the cabin while he investigated the woods round the clearing to makesure how many roads or paths led out of it. He proposed to carry hissheath-knife and the stout and tried staff which had helped him along themountain trails, as a similar one had helped me, and to take Hylactor withhim: to make a circuit about the clearing some ten yards or so inside theforest and, if necessary a second circuit, further away from our glade.These two circuits should make him sure how many tracks led from or to ourclearing. Then he would follow each track and acquaint himself with it,and, if possible, learn where it led. I approved.

  Before noon he reported that only three tracks approached our location;that by which we had reached it up the slope of the mountain, and onealong the slope in each direction. About mid-afternoon he returned up thetrack by which we had come, stating that the trail southwards, about aleague south of us, joined the road along which we had travelled tillHylactor diverted us: he had made the circuit along the length of theleague or more of trail, back along the road by which we had travelled andup the track by which Hylactor had led us; he had met no living thing,save a hare or two, too fleet for Hylactor to catch; he had caught sightof no town, village or farmstead, even afar. He had made sure that themules had left the clearing by the track he had followed out of it, sothat, probably, the children's father had gone south. Exploring the othertrail he had put off till the next day.

  Next day he found that the other track joined the lower road only abouthalf a league to northeastwards. He turned back along the lower road andreturned by the uphill track, as he had done the day before to the south.He met no one and saw no town, village or farmstead anywhere in sight, andat some places he could see far to the eastward.

  We discussed his proposal to go off alone, with a wallet of food and tryto steal an axe. Plainly he would have to go far. It would be easy enoughto sneak back to the farm where we had spent our last night before meetingHylactor, but we both felt bound by the obligation of our hospitableentertainment there: though nameless fugitives we were still under thespell of the standards of our former lives. We admitted to each other thathe might steal an axe from that farm and I condone the knavery and availmyself of its proceeds; but we agreed that such baseness must be stoopedto only as a desperate last resort. He was to set off northwards next day.

  That night the woman, who had been inert and manageable, in a half-stupor,became violently delirious and for a time it took all the strengthAgathemer and I jointly possessed to hold her in bed. Prima and Secunda,waked by her shrieks, were in a pitiable panic, Secunda merely dazed andaghast, Prima begging us not to kill her mother, fancying we wereattacking her. We managed to convince the child that we were doing ourbest and what was best for her mother and that her mother's ravings wouldquiet and that she might regain her reason and health. I induced bothchildren to return to their bed and shut and bolted their door. Agathemerand I, by turns, and twice again each helping the other, kept the poorwoman in her bed all night. At dawn she quieted and fell into a profoundstupor. But the vigil left me and Agathemer worn out. We attended to themilking, feeding and watering of the stock and then I went to sleep in oneof the slave hovels, which were free from vermin, not the least amazing ofthe many amazing features of our place of sojourn.

  This outbreak of our insensible hostess made impossible the immediateexecution of Agathemer's project. He had to have adequate rest before hecould set off. After I had slept all the morning, he slept most of theafternoon. During his nap I found, behind the water-jar in the hut, ahatchet-head, with the handle broken off and what was left of it jammed inthe hole. It was small, but not very rusty or dull. Before Agathemerwakened I had it well sharpened. We had found a mallet in the storehouse,and, with this and a cornel-wood peg he whittled with his sheath-knife,Agathemer drove out the broken bit of hatchet handle. He then fashionedwith his sheath-knife a good handle of tough, seasoned ash from a piece hehad found in one of the buildings. With this hatchet we
could cut up smallboughs selected from the big woodpile, but it was too small to enable usto cut logs into lengths or split lengths of logs.

  Again, when Agathemer was planning for the next day his axe-stealingexpedition, the woman had a fit of raving. This lasted a night, a day anda night and left both of us to the last degree weary and drowsy. Before wehad recuperated our firewood was almost used up. The situation lookedhopeless. It was well along into the Autumn, though we were now unsure ofwhat month we were in, so completely had we lost count of the days. AgainAgathemer projected an expedition for the next day, in the faint hope ofobtaining us an axe, and I feared he now aimed for our last harborage. Atdusk, as he hunted for small wood under the margin of the woodpile, hefound a good, big, double-edged axe-head. It was dull and very rusty, andhe had a vast deal of trouble getting out the fragment of broken handleand shaping a new handle, in which he was greatly helped by a fairly gooddraw-knife, which I had that very morning found hanging on a peg behindthe hay in the loft over the cow-shed. He had quite as much trouble infitting the handle into the axe-head and in sharpening both edges. But hedid all that before we composed ourselves to sleep. Besides those on thepartition we had found a score of fine bronze lamps and we had olive oilenough for all uses for two winters.

  Next morning we woke to find all our world buried under a foot of snow,the pines laden with it, the boughs of the beeches, oaks and chestnutsfurred with it along their tops. It was a magic outlook, the like of whichneither of us had ever seen.

  After that, all through the winter, our life was an unvarying routine ofmilking, feeding and watering the stock, preparing and eating mealslimited only by our appetites, nursing the sick woman, and choppingfirewood. From the first streak of dawn till the last gleam of twilightone or the other of us chopped the firewood. Neither of us was an adept athandling an axe. But Agathemer, with his half Greek ancestry and hiswholly Greek versatility and adaptability, taught himself to be a goodaxeman in ten days. I bungled and blundered away at it all winter.Agathemer could cut a two-foot oak log into suitable lengths with aminimum of effort, with clean, effective strokes of the ringing axe, thecuts sharp and even; I could cut any log into lengths and enjoyed theeffort, but I sweated over it and laid half my strokes awry, so that theends of my lengths were notched and unsightly.

  Also I broke five several axe-helves in the course of the winter. Thefirst time I broke a helve Agathemer had no substitute ready, and, whatwas more, the fragment of the old helve was in so tight that he had toburn it out in the fire and then retemper and resharpen our one preciousaxe-head. His retempering and resharpening turned out all right, but hesaid his success was accidental and he might ruin the axe if he triedagain. So he made two extra helves and had a dozen cornel-wood pegs readyto drive out the bit of broken handle next time I broke it; as I did,according to his laughing forecast.

  The incessant labor of our days hardened both of us. Our muscles were likesteel rods. We slept on our mattresses by that ash-covered fire as I hadnever slept at Villa Andivia or at my mansion in Rome. We ate enormouslyand relished every mouthful.

  Riving lengths of logs with wedges and maul was a kind of work calling forno special skill; Agathemer taught me all he knew in a day or two. Allwinter we alternated this work with woodchopping, afterwards chopping theriven lengths into firewood lengths and then splitting these intofirewood. Although we worked at riving and chopping and splitting everymoment of daylight when we were not busy at something else, we neveraccumulated any comfortable store of firewood, so as to be able to resteven one day. We drank new milk by the quart, with both our meals; wine,abundantly as we were supplied with it and good as it proved to be, wedrank sparingly, merely a draught at waking, one after each meal, and oneat bedtime. What we took we took strong, mixing wine and water in equalproportions.

  Both Agathemer and I preferred cows' milk and drank that only, as we gavecows' milk only to the sick woman. Both children preferred ewes' milk. Aswe had no hogs to feed we were put to it what to do with our surplus milk.Agathemer made a sort of soft cheese, by putting sour curds in a bag andhanging it up to drain. We both liked this and so did the little girls.But we could not use much this way. Agathemer, always resourceful, fed thedog all the goat's milk he would lap up, and, after he had set to curdlewhat seemed enough, mixed the rest, while fresh and sweet, with water andgave this mixture to the cows to drink, saying it increased their yield ofmilk. As the winter wore on he fed similarly the best milkers among theewes and goats.