. and when you are within the city, you will have your men break ranks and search every house in Rome until you find him."

I wondered whom they were looking for: probably some great malefactor, I thought. Then I heard a sudden exclamation, and someone yelled, "There he is now!"

I looked. The man who yelled was the civilian I had half-seen among the officers. I knew him. He was Antonia's majordomo, and he was pointing at me! I turned and ran; and at a command from the General, the whole legion broke ranks and pursued me.

Believe me, I gave them a merry chase, and they never would have caught up with me had I not run plunk into a sentry who grabbed me just on general principles, although he didn't know what it was all about.

That legion was puffing when it arrived and surrounded me, and the General was puffing hardest of all and was very red in the face.

"You young jackanapes," he got out between puffs. "Why did you run away?"

"Because I didn't want my throat cut," I replied quite honestly.

Just then; the majordomo came puffing along like a grampus, in time to hear what I said.

"In the name of all the gods," he cried, "come along with me; nobody is going to cut your throat. All that they want of you is that you should get back there as quickly as possible. Little Boots has been screeching at the top of his lungs ever since you ran away, and they are afraid that he will break something in his insides. If he does, then you will get your throat cut. Come along!"

He grasped me by an arm and hustled me off to a carruca drawn by four horses. We were back at Antonia's in nothing flat. Little Boots was still screaming, but he stopped, perfectly dry-eyed, when I entered the tablinum-and winked at me.

Agrippina muttered something that sounded very much like "Nasty little barbarian," and flounced out of the room. There was no more stilt-walking for either Little Boots or myself: she had the stilts broken up and burned.

"That," said Little Boots, "was a dirty trick-just when I was learning to walk on them: I'm going to get even with her."

I didn't know how he planned getting even with Agrippina. I felt that it would take nothing less than the Emperor and a couple of cohorts of legionaries to give the old girl what we both thought she had coming to her-nothing, in fact, that two kids could do; but Little Boots was already resourceful in affairs of vengeance.

"Come!" he said, and led the way to the pool in the peristyle. "Help me catch a frog, Brit."

That meant that I had to catch the frog, which, of course, was no trick at all.

"What do you want of a frog?" I asked.

"Wait and see," said Little Boots. "You are going to be surprised; so will someone else."

"I don't know what you are going to do," I said, "but I think you had better not do it."

"Silence, slave!" said Little Boots.

"You call me that again and I won't play with you," I shot back.

"Well, you are a slave."

"I am the great-grandson of Cingetorix."

"Still, you are yet a slave, and I am a Julian: That's the same as being a god."

"Nuts!" I said. "Who ever put that silly idea in your head?"

"My mother has told me that many times.