Drusus faced his two subordinates, and in an eye's twinkling had taken in the situation.

Mamercus, who felt within himself that he, by his oversight, had been the chief blunderer, to vent his vexation smote Falto so sound a cuff that the under villicus sprawled his full length.
"Go to the ergastulum and fetch Agias this instant," cried Drusus, in thundering accents, to the trembling Mago, who had appeared on the scene.
Mago disappeared like magic, but in an instant a din was rising from the front of the house,--cries, blows, clash of steel.

Into the peristylium, where the angry young master was standing, rushed the old slave woman, Lais.
"_Hei! hei!_" she screamed, "they are breaking in! Monsters! a hundred of them! They will kill us all!" Drusus grew calm in an instant.
"Barricade the doors to the atrium!" he commanded, "while I can put on my armour.

You, Mamercus, are too old for this kind of work; run and call in the field-hands, the clients, and the neighbours.

Cappadox, Falto, and I can hold the doors till aid comes." "I run ?" cried the veteran, in hot incredulity, while with his single hand he tore from its stout leather wall-fastenings a shield that had been beaten with Punic swords at the Metaurus.[114] "I run ?" he repeated, while a mighty crash told that the front door had given way, and the attackers were pouring into the atrium.