All of this bench were hard, grey-headed, weazened agriculturists, who looked with no very lenient eye upon the delicate and handsome young prisoner before them.

Agias had to answer a series of savagely propounded questions which led he knew not whither, and which he was almost too bewildered to answer intelligently.

The true state of the case only came over him by degrees.

These were the facts.

Drusus had known that there was a conspiracy against his life, and had taken precautions against poisoning or being waylaid by a small band of cut-throats such as he imagined Ahenobarbus might have sent to despatch him.