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The only person who was not pleased was Ralph Bland. You see he was Billy’s nearest relative and would inherit if Billy died without children and he had got very hopeful as time went on. “He came to a very sad end—in fact I don’t know what became of him—but at the time of which I am speaking he was extremely popular, especially with women … Poor Viola Chasm was terribly in love with him. Wanted to run away. She and Lady Anchorage were very jealous of each other about him. It became quite disagreeable, particularly when Viola found that Lady Anchorage was paying her maid five pounds a week to send on all Ralph’s letters to her—before Viola had read them, that was what she minded. He really had a most agreeable manner and said such ridiculous things … The marriage was a great disappointment to Ralph; he was married himself and had two children. She had a little money at one time, but Ralph ran through it. Billy did not get on with Ralph—they had very little in common, of course—but he treated him quite well and was always getting him out of difficulties. In fact he made him a regular allowance at one time, and what with that and what he got from Viola and Lady Anchorage he was really quite comfortable. But, as he said, he had his children’s future to consider, so that Billy’s marriage was a great disappointment to him. He even talked of emigrating and Billy advanced him a large sum of money to purchase a sheep farm in New Zealand, but nothing came of that because Ralph had a Jewish friend in the city who made away with the entire amount. It all happened in a very unfortunate manner because Billy had given him this lump sum on the understanding that he should not expect an allowance. And then Viola and Lady Anchorage were greatly upset at his talk of leaving and made other arrangements so that in one way and another Ralph found himself in very low water, poor thing. “However he began to recover his spirits when, after two years, there was no sign of an heir. People had babies very much more regularly when I was young. Everybody expected that Etty would have a baby—she was a nice healthy little thing—and when she did not, there was a great deal of ill-natured gossip. Ralph himself behaved very wrongly in the matter. He used to make jokes about it, my husband told me, quite openly at his club in the worst possible taste. “I well remember the last time that Ralph stayed with the Cornphillips; it was a Christmas party and he came with his wife and his two children. The eldest boy was about six at the time and there was a very painful scene. I was not there myself, but we were staying nearby with the Lockejaws and of course we heard all about it. Billy seems to have been in his most pompous mood and was showing off the house when Ralph’s little boy said solemnly and very loudly, ‘Daddy says that when I step into your shoes I can pull the whole place down. The only thing worth worrying about is the money.’ “It was towards the end of a large and rather old-fashioned Christmas party, so no one was feeling in a forgiving mood. There was a final breach between the two cousins. Until then, in spite of the New Zealand venture, Billy had been reluctantly supporting Ralph. Now the allowance ceased once for all and Ralph took it in very bad part. “You know what it is—or perhaps, dear Miss Myers, you are so fortunate as not to know what it is—when near relatives begin to quarrel. There is no limit to the savagery to which they will resort. I should be ashamed to indicate the behaviour of these two men towards each other during the next two or three years. No one had any sympathy with either. “For example, Billy, of course, was a Conservative. Ralph came down and stood as a Radical in the General Election in his own county and got in. “This, you must understand, was in the days before the lower classes began going into politics. It was customary for the candidates on both sides to be men of means and, in the circumstances, there was considerable expenditure involved. Much more in fact than Ralph could well afford, but in those days Members of Parliament had many opportunities for improving their position, so we all thought it a very wise course of Ralph’s—the first really sensible thing we had known him to do. What followed was very shocking. “Billy of course had refused to lend his interest—that was only to be expected—but when the election was over, and everybody perfectly satisfied with the result, he did what I always consider a Very Wrong Thing. He made an accusation against Ralph of corrupt practices. It was a matter of three pounds which Ralph had given to a gardener whom Billy had discharged for drunkenness. I daresay that all that kind of thing has ceased nowadays, but at the time to which I refer, it was universally customary. No one had any sympathy with Billy but he pressed the charge and poor Ralph was unseated. “Well, after this time, I really think that poor Ralph became a little unsettled in his mind. It is a very sad thing, Miss Myers, when a middle-aged man becomes obsessed by a grievance. You remember how difficult it was when the Vicar thought that Major Etheridge was persecuting him. He actually informed me that Major Etheridge put water in the petrol tank of his motor-cycle and gave sixpences to the choir boys to sing out of tune—well it was like that with poor Ralph. He made up his mind that Billy had deliberately ruined him. He took a cottage in the village and used to embarrass Billy terribly by coming to all the village fêtes and staring at Billy fixedly. Poor Billy was always embarrassed when he had to make a speech. Ralph used to laugh ironically at the wrong places but never so loudly that Billy could have him turned out. And he used to go to public houses and drink far too much. They found him asleep on the terrace twice. And of course no one on the place liked to offend him, because at any moment he might become Lord Cornphillip. “It must have been a very trying time for Billy. He and Etty were not getting on at all well together, poor things, and she spent more and more time in the Garden of Her Thoughts and brought out a very silly little book of sonnets, mostly about Venice and Florence, though she could never induce Billy to take her abroad. 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They never did much.” “I had an idea they’d split.” “It doesn’t look like it.” “Come to think of it, I do remember some talk last spring,” said Sybil. “Yes, I remember. Brenda had a fancy for someone quite extraordinary. I can’t remember who it was, but I know it was someone quite extraordinary.” “Wasn’t that her sister Marjorie?” “Oh no, hers was Robin Beasley.” “Yes, of course … Brenda’s looking pretty.” “Such a waste. But I don’t think she’d ever have the energy now to get away.” At Brenda and Tony’s table they were saying, “I wish you’d see her.” “No, you must see her.” “All right, I’ll see her.” Tony had to go and see Mrs. Beaver about the flat. Ever since his return they had been trying to sublet it. Now Mrs. Beaver had informed them that there was a tenant in sight. So while Brenda was at the doctor’s (she was expecting a baby) Tony went round to the shop. Mrs. Beaver was surrounded with a new sort of lampshade made of cellophane and cork. “How are you, Mr. Last?” she said, rather formally. “We haven’t met since that delightful weekend at Hetton.” “I hear you’ve found a tenant for the flat.” “Yes, I think so. A young cousin of Viola Chasm’s. Of course I’m afraid you’ll have to make some slight sacrifice. You see the flats have proved too popular, if you see what I mean. The demand was so brisk that a great many other firms came into the market and, as a result, rents have fallen. Everyone is taking flats of the kind now, but the speculative builders are letting them at competitive rents. The new tenant will only pay two pounds fifteen a week and he insists on its being entirely repainted. We will undertake that, of course. I think we can make a very nice job of it for fifty pounds or so.” “You know,” said Tony, “I’ve been thinking. It’s rather a useful thing to have—a flat of that kind.” “It is necessary,” said Mrs. Beaver. “Exactly. Well I think I shall keep it on. The only trouble is that my wife is inclined to fret a little about the rent. My idea is to use it when I come to London instead of my club. It will be cheaper and a great deal more convenient. But my wife may not see it in that light … in fact …” “I quite understand.” “I think it would be better if my name didn’t appear on that board downstairs.” “Naturally. A number of my tenants are taking the same precaution.” “So that’s all right.” “That’s quite satisfactory. I daresay you will want some little piece of extra furniture—a writing table, for instance.” “Yes, I suppose I had better.” “I’ll send one round. I think I know just what will suit you.” The table was delivered a week later. It cost eighteen pounds; on the same day there was a new name painted on the board below. And for the price of the table Mrs. Beaver observed absolute discretion. Tony met Brenda at Marjorie’s house and they caught the evening train together. “Did you get rid of the flat?” she asked. “Yes, that’s all settled.” “Mrs. Beaver decent?” “Very decent.” “So that’s the end of that,” said Brenda. And the train sped through the darkness towards Hetton. Lady Amelia had been educated in the belief that it was the height of impropriety to read a novel in the morning. Now, in the twilight of her days, when she had singularly little to occupy the two hours between her appearance downstairs at quarter past eleven, hatted and fragrant with lavender water, and the announcement of luncheon, she adhered rigidly to this principle. As soon as luncheon was over, however, and coffee had been served in the drawing room; before the hot milk in his saucer had sufficiently cooled for Manchu to drink it; while the sunlight, in summer, streamed through the Venetian blinds of the round-fronted Regency windows; while, in winter, the carefully stacked coal-fire glowed in its round-fronted grate; while Manchu sniffed and sipped at his saucer, and Lady Amelia spread out on her knees the various shades of coarse wool with which her failing eyesight now compelled her to work; while the elegant Regency clock ticked off the two and a half hours to tea time—it was Miss Myers’s duty to read a novel aloud to her employer. With the passing years Lady Amelia had grown increasingly fond of novels, and of novels of a particular type. They were what the assistant in the circulating library termed “strong meat” and kept in a hidden place under her desk. It was Miss Myers’s duty to fetch and return them. “Have you anything of the kind Lady Amelia likes?” she would ask sombrely. “Well, there’s this just come in,” the assistant would answer, fishing up a volume from somewhere near her feet. At one time Lady Amelia had enjoyed love stories about the irresponsible rich; then she had had a psychological phase; at the moment her interests were American, in the school of brutal realism and gross slang. “Something else like Sanctuary or Bessie Cotter,” Miss Myers was reluctantly obliged to demand. And as the still afternoon was disturbed by her delicately modulated tones enunciating page by page, in scarcely comprehensible idiom, the narratives of rape and betrayal, Lady Amelia would occasionally chuckle a little over her woolwork. “Women of my age always devote themselves either to religion or novels,” she said. “I have remarked among my few surviving friends that those who read novels enjoy far better health.” The story they were reading came to an end at half past four. “Thank you,” said Lady Amelia. “That was most entertaining. Make a note of the author’s name, please, Miss Myers. You will be able to go to the library after tea and see whether they have another. I hope you enjoyed it.” “Well, it was very sad, wasn’t it?” “Sad?” “I mean the poor young man who wrote it must come from a terrible home.” “Why do you say that, Miss Myers?” “Well, it was so far fetched.” “It is odd you should think so. I invariably find modern novels painfully reticent. Of course until lately I never read novels at all. I cannot say what they were like formerly. I was far too busy in the old days living my own life and sharing the lives of my friends—all people who came from anything but terrible homes,” she added with a glance at her companion; a glance sharp and smart as a rap on the knuckles with an ivory ruler. There was half an hour before tea; Manchu was asleep on the hearth rug, before the fireless grate; the sun streamed in through the blinds, casting long strips of light on the Aubusson carpet. Lady Amelia fixed her eyes on the embroidered, heraldic firescreen; and proceeded dreamily. “I suppose it would not do. You couldn’t write about the things which actually happen. People are so used to novels that they would not believe them. The poor writers are constantly at pains to make the truth seem probable. Dear me, I often think, as you sit, so kindly, reading to me, ‘If one was just to write down quite simply the events of a few years in any household one knows … No one would believe it.’ I can hear you yourself, dear Miss Myers, saying, ‘Perhaps these things do happen, very occasionally, once in a century, in terrible homes’; instead of which they are constantly happening, every day, all round us—or at least, they were in my young days. “Take for example the extremely ironic circumstances of the succession of the present Lord Cornphillip: “I used to know the Cornphillips very well in the old days,” said Lady Amelia—“Etty was a cousin of my mother’s—and when we were first married my husband and I used to stay there every autumn for the pheasant shooting. Billy Cornphillip was a very dull man—very dull indeed. He was in my husband’s regiment. I used to know a great many dull people at the time when I was first married, but Billy Cornphillip was notorious for dullness even among my husband’s friends. Their place is in Wiltshire. I see the boy is trying to sell it now. I am not surprised. It was very ugly and very unhealthy. I used to dread our visits there. “Etty was entirely different, a lively little thing with very nice eyes. People thought her fast. Of course it was a very good match for her; she was one of seven sisters and her father was a younger son, poor dear. Billy was twelve years older. She had been after him for years. I remember crying with pleasure when I received her letter telling me of the engagement … It was at the breakfast table … she used a very artistic kind of writing paper with pale blue edges and bows of blue ribbon at the corner … “Poor Etty was always being artistic; she tried to do something with the house—put up peacocks’ feathers and painted tambourines and some very modern stencil work—but the result was always depressing. She made a little garden for herself at some distance from the house, with a high wall and a padlocked door, where she used to retire to think—or so she said—for hours at a time. She called it the Garden of Her Thoughts. I went in with her once, as a great privilege, after one of her quarrels with Billy. Nothing grew very well there—because of the high walls, I suppose, and her doing it all herself. There was a mossy seat in the middle. I suppose she used to sit on it while she thought. The whole place had a nasty dank smell … “Well we were all delighted at Etty’s luck and I think she quite liked Billy at first and was prepared to behave well to him, in spite of his dullness. You see it came just when we had all despaired. Billy had been the friend of Lady Instow for a long time and we were all afraid she would never let him marry but they had a quarrel at Cowes that year and Billy went up to Scotland in a bad temper and little Etty was staying in the house; so everything was arranged and I was one of her bridesmaids.

Rip had got to the decent age when he disliked meeting new people. He lived a contented life between New York and the more American parts of Europe and everywhere, by choosing his season, he found enough of his old acquaintances to keep him effortlessly amused. For fifteen years at least he had dined with Margot Metroland during the first week of his visit to London, and he had always been sure of finding six or eight familiar and welcoming faces. It is true that there were also strangers, but these had passed before him and disappeared from his memory, leaving no more impression than a change of servants at his hotel. Tonight, however, as he entered the drawing room, before he had greeted his hostess or nodded to Alastair Trumptington, he was aware of something foreign and disturbing. A glance round the assembled party confirmed his alarm. All the men were standing save one; these were mostly old friends interspersed with a handful of new, gawky, wholly inconsiderable young men, but the seated figure instantly arrested his attention and froze his bland smile. This was an elderly, large man, quite bald, with a vast white face that spread down and out far beyond the normal limits. It was like Mother Hippo in Tiger Tim; it was like an evening shirt-front in a du Maurier drawing; down in the depths of the face was a little crimson smirking mouth; and, above it, eyes that had a shifty, deprecating look, like those of a temporary butler caught out stealing shirts. Lady Metroland seldom affronted her guests’ reticence by introducing them. “Dear Rip,” she said, “it’s lovely to see you again. I’ve got all the gang together for you, you see,” and then noticing that his eyes were fixed upon the stranger, added, “Doctor Kakophilos, this is Mr. Van Winkle. Doctor Kakophilos,” she added, “is a great magician. Norah brought him, I can’t think why.” “Musician?” “Magician. Norah says there’s nothing he can’t do.” “How do you do?” said Rip. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” said Dr. Kakophilos, in a thin Cockney voice. “Eh?” “There is no need to reply. If you wish to, it is correct to say ‘Love is the law, Love under will.’” “I see.” “You are unusually blessed. Most men are blind.” “I tell you what,” said Lady Metroland. “Let’s all have some dinner.” It took an hour’s substantial eating and drinking before Rip began to feel at ease again. He was well placed between two married women of his own generation, with both of whom, at one time and another, he had had affairs; but even their genial gossip could not entirely hold his attention and he found himself continually gazing down the table to where, ten places away, Dr. Kakophilos was frightening a pop-eyed débutante out of all semblance of intelligence. Later, however, wine and reminiscence began to glow within him. He remembered that he had been brought up a Catholic and had therefore no need to fear black magic. He reflected that he was wealthy and in good health; that none of his women had ever borne him ill-will (and what better sign of good character was there than that?); that it was his first week in London and that everyone he most liked seemed to be there too; that the wine was so copious he had ceased to notice its excellence. He got going well and soon had six neighbours listening as he told some successful stories in his soft, lazy voice; he became aware with familiar, electric tremors that he had captured the attention of a lady opposite on whom he had had his eye last summer in Venice and two years before in Paris; he drank a good deal more and didn’t care a damn for Dr. Kakophilos. Presently, almost imperceptibly to Rip, the ladies left the dining room. He found himself with a ballon of brandy and a cigar, leaning back in his chair and talking for about the first time in his life to Lord Metroland. He was telling him about big game when he was aware of a presence at his other side, like a cold draught. He turned and saw that Dr. Kakophilos had come sidling up to him. “You will see me home tonight,” said the magician. “You and Sir Alastair?” “Like hell I will,” said Rip. “Like hell,” repeated Dr. Kakophilos, deep meaning resounding through his horrible Cockney tones. “I have need of you.” “Perhaps we ought to be going up,” said Lord Metroland, “or Margot will get restless.” For Rip the rest of the evening passed in a pleasant daze. He remembered Margot confiding in him that Norah and that silly little something girl had had a scene about Dr. Kakophilos and had both gone home in rages. Presently the party began to thin until he found himself alone with Alastair Trumptington drinking whiskeys in the small drawing room. 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Although Mr. McMaster had lived in Amazonas for nearly sixty years, no one except a few families of Shiriana Indians was aware of his existence. His house stood in a small savannah, one of those little patches of sand and grass that crop up occasionally in that neighbourhood, three miles or so across, bounded on all sides by forest. The stream which watered it was not marked on any map; it ran through rapids, always dangerous and at most seasons of the year impassable, to join the upper waters of the River Uraricoera, whose course, though boldly delineated in every school atlas, is still largely conjectural. None of the inhabitants of the district, except Mr. McMaster, had ever heard of the republic of Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil or Bolivia, each of whom had at one time or another claimed its possession. Mr. McMaster’s house was larger than those of his neighbours, but similar in character—a palm thatch roof, breast high walls of mud and wattle, and a mud floor. He owned the dozen or so head of puny cattle which grazed in the savannah, a plantation of cassava, some banana and mango trees, a dog, and, unique in the neighbourhood, a single-barrelled, breech-loading shotgun. The few commodities which he employed from the outside world came to him through a long succession of traders, passed from hand to hand, bartered for in a dozen languages at the extreme end of one of the longest threads in the web of commerce that spreads from Manáos into the remote fastness of the forest. One day while Mr. McMaster was engaged in filling some cartridges, a Shiriana came to him with the news that a white man was approaching through the forest, alone and very sick. He closed the cartridge and loaded his gun with it, put those that were finished into his pocket and set out in the direction indicated. The man was already clear of the bush when Mr. McMaster reached him, sitting on the ground, clearly in a very bad way. He was without hat or boots, and his clothes were so torn that it was only by the dampness of his body that they adhered to it; his feet were cut and grossly swollen, every exposed surface of skin was scarred by insect and bat bites; his eyes were wild with fever. He was talking to himself in delirium, but stopped when Mr. McMaster approached and addressed him in English. “I’m tired,” the man said; then: “Can’t go any farther. My name is Henty and I’m tired. Anderson died. That was a long time ago. I expect you think I’m very odd.” “I think you are ill, my friend.” “Just tired. It must be several months since I had anything to eat.” Mr. McMaster hoisted him to his feet and, supporting him by the arm, led him across the hummocks of grass towards the farm. “It is a very short way. When we get there I will give you something to make you better.” “Jolly kind of you.” Presently he said: “I say, you speak English. I’m English, too. My name is Henty.” “Well, Mr. Henty, you aren’t to bother about anything more. You’re ill and you’ve had a rough journey. I’ll take care of you.” They went very slowly, but at length reached the house. “Lie there in the hammock. I will fetch something for you.” Mr. McMaster went into the back room of the house and dragged a tin canister from under a heap of skins. It was full of a mixture of dried leaf and bark. He took a handful and went outside to the fire. When he returned he put one hand behind Henty’s head and held up the concoction of herbs in a calabash for him to drink. He sipped, shuddering slightly at the bitterness. At last he finished it. Mr. McMaster threw out the dregs on the floor. Henty lay back in the hammock sobbing quietly. Soon he fell into a deep sleep. “Ill-fated” was the epithet applied by the press to the Anderson expedition to the Parima and upper Uraricoera region of Brazil. Every stage of the enterprise from the preliminary arrangements in London to its tragic dissolution in Amazonas was attacked by misfortune. It was due to one of the early setbacks that Paul Henty became connected with it. He was not by nature an explorer; an even-tempered, good-looking young man of fastidious tastes and enviable possessions, unintellectual, but appreciative of fine architecture and the ballet, well travelled in the more accessible parts of the world, a collector though not a connoisseur, popular among hostesses, revered by his aunts. He was married to a lady of exceptional charm and beauty, and it was she who upset the good order of his life by confessing her affection for another man for the second time in the eight years of their marriage. The first occasion had been a short-lived infatuation with a tennis professional, the second was a captain in the Coldstream Guards, and more serious. Henty’s first thought under the shock of this revelation was to go out and dine alone. He was a member of four clubs, but at three of them he was liable to meet his wife’s lover. Accordingly he chose one which he rarely frequented, a semi-intellectual company composed of publishers, barristers, and men of scholarship awaiting election to the Athenaeum. Here, after dinner, he fell into conversation with Professor Anderson and first heard of the proposed expedition to Brazil. The particular misfortune that was retarding arrangements at that moment was the defalcation of the secretary with two-thirds of the expedition’s capital. The principals were ready—Professor Anderson, Dr. Simmons the anthropologist, Mr. Necher the biologist, Mr. Brough the surveyor, wireless operator and mechanic—the scientific and sporting apparatus was packed up in crates ready to be embarked, the necessary facilities had been stamped and signed by the proper authorities, but unless twelve hundred pounds was forthcoming the whole thing would have to be abandoned. Henty, as has been suggested, was a man of comfortable means; the expedition would last from nine months to a year; he could shut his country house—his wife, he reflected, would want to remain in London near her young man—and cover more than the sum required. There was a glamour about the whole journey which might, he felt, move even his wife’s sympathies. There and then, over the club fire, he decided to accompany Professor Anderson. When he went home that evening he announced to his wife: “I have decided what I shall do.” “Yes, darling?” “You are certain that you no longer love me?” “Darling, you know, I adore you.” “But you are certain you love this guardsman, Tony whatever-his-name-is, more?” “Oh, yes, ever so much more. Quite a different thing altogether.” “Very well, then. I do not propose to do anything about a divorce for a year. You shall have time to think it over. I am leaving next week for the Uraricoera.” “Golly, where’s that?” “I am not perfectly sure. Somewhere in Brazil, I think. It is unexplored. I shall be away a year.” “But darling, how ordinary! Like people in books—big game, I mean, and all that.” “You have obviously already discovered that I am a very ordinary person.” “Now, Paul, don’t be disagreeable—oh, there’s the telephone. It’s probably Tony. If it is, d’you mind terribly if I talk to him alone for a bit?” But in the ten days of preparation that followed she showed greater tenderness, putting off her soldier twice in order to accompany Henty to the shops where he was choosing his equipment and insisting on his purchasing a worsted cummerbund. On his last evening she gave a supper party for him at the Embassy to which she allowed him to ask any of his friends he liked; he could think of no one except Professor Anderson, who looked oddly dressed, danced tirelessly and was something of a failure with everyone. Next day Mrs. Henty came with her husband to the boat train and presented him with a pale blue, extravagantly soft blanket, in a suède case of the same colour furnished with a zip fastener and monogram. She kissed him good-bye and said, “Take care of yourself in wherever it is.”

It struck eight. Bella waited. Nobody came. She sat down on a gilt chair at the head of the stairs, looked steadily before her with her blank, blue eyes. In the hall, in the cloakroom, in the supper room, the hired footmen looked at one another with knowing winks. “What does the old girl expect? No one’ll have finished dinner before ten.” The linkmen on the steps stamped and chafed their hands. At half past twelve Bella rose from her chair. Her face gave no indication of what she was thinking. “Riley, I think I will have some supper. I am not feeling altogether well.” She hobbled slowly to the dining room. “Give me a stuffed quail and a glass of wine. Tell the band to start playing.” The Blue Danube waltz flooded the house. Bella smiled approval and swayed her head a little to the rhythm. “Riley, I am really quite hungry. I’ve had nothing all day. Give me another quail and some more champagne.” Alone among the candles and the hired footmen, Riley served his mistress with an immense supper. She enjoyed every mouthful. Presently she rose. “I am afraid there must be some mistake. No one seems to be coming to the ball. It is very disappointing after all our trouble. You may tell the band to go home.” But just as she was leaving the dining room there was a stir in the hall. Guests were arriving. With wild resolution Bella swung herself up the stairs. She must get to the top before the guests were announced. One hand on the banister, one on her stick, pounding heart, two steps at a time. At last she reached the landing and turned to face the company. There was a mist before her eyes and a singing in her ears. She breathed with effort, but dimly she saw four figures advancing and saw Riley meet them and heard him announce: “Lord and Lady Mockstock, Sir Samuel and Lady Gordon.” Suddenly the daze in which she had been moving cleared. Here on the stairs were the two women she had not invited—Lady Mockstock the draper’s daughter, Lady Gordon the American. She drew herself up and fixed them with her blank, blue eyes. “I had not expected this honour,” she said. “Please forgive me if I am unable to entertain you.” The Mockstocks and the Gordons stood aghast; saw the mad blue eyes of their hostess, her crimson dress; the ballroom beyond, looking immense in its emptiness; heard the dance music echoing through the empty house. The air was charged with the scent of chrysanthemums. And then the drama and unreality of the scene were dispelled. Miss Fleace suddenly sat down, and holding out her hands to her butler, said, “I don’t quite know what’s happening.” He and two of the hired footmen carried the old lady to a sofa. She spoke only once more. Her mind was still on the same subject. “They came uninvited, those two … and nobody else.” A day later she died. Mr. Banks arrived for the funeral and spent a week sorting out her effects. Among them he found in her escritoire, stamped, addressed, but unposted, the invitations to the ball.B, awesome pants, make up the deficiency your body curves, just wear one, it will become the brand loyal customers. C, with different tops with different styles, light-colored, so you sweet, pleasant, dark, and was particularly cool. D, with different Abercrombie and Fitch Polo Shirts can match.Waist style, show your best slim design Oh! Grass green is the youngest representative of the most fashionable colors! As early as 1892, David Abercrombie the explorers from Maryland, outdoor sports enthusiast, was established in Manhattan, New York Abercrombie and Fitch Tee Shirts. A commitment to high quality camping, hunting, fishing appliances franchisee. Later, because the addition of Ezra Fitch, the company changed its name to Abercrombie & Fitch. As the first American casual clothing cheap big, A & F respected comfortable, natural, wild, a little decadence slightly uninhibited casual style; and its narrow cut, low-neck T-shirt, close the waist, so that lines the chest and waist outstanding, extraordinary sexy.Casual wear brand from the U.S. Abercrombie and Fitch Polo Shirts (Abercrombie & Fitch), identity is a long with elk horns. Abercrombie & Fitch in Chinese called “Abbe & Fitch than cloning,” but we prefer to directly call referred to as: Abercrombie and Fitch Polos, or with A & F’s nickname: small deer. A & F (Abercrombie & Fitch) is a highly influential minds of American youth fashion super brand, its total of Cheap abercrombie classic shirts sale, Abercrombie Kids, Hollister, Ruehl, Ezra Fitch five sub-brands. Abercrombie & Fitch (referred to as A & F) is the global fashion whirlwind off the first big American leisure, today’s young people, the most popular brand, is the brand of American college students one of the most IN, is founded in 1892 in New York’s century-old brand.

They knew Bella, though she did not know them. She had become a by-word in the neighbourhood, a much-valued joke. “A rotten day,” they would report. “We found our fox, but lost again almost at once. But we saw Bella. Wonder how long the old girl will last. She must be nearly ninety. My father remembers when she used to hunt—went like smoke, too.” Indeed, Bella herself was becoming increasingly occupied with the prospect of death. In the winter before the one we are talking of, she had been extremely ill. She emerged in April, rosy cheeked as ever, but slower in her movements and mind. She gave instructions that better attention must be paid to her father’s and brother’s graves, and in June took the unprecedented step of inviting her heir to visit her. She had always refused to see this young man up till now. He was an Englishman, a very distant cousin, named Banks. He lived in South Kensington and occupied himself in the Museum. He arrived in August and wrote long and very amusing letters to all his friends describing his visit, and later translated his experiences into a short story for the Spectator. Bella disliked him from the moment he arrived. He had horn-rimmed spectacles and a BBC voice. He spent most of his time photographing the Fleacetown chimneypieces and the moulding of the doors. One day he came to Bella bearing a pile of calf-bound volumes from the library. “I say, did you know you had these?” he asked. “I did,” Bella lied. “All first editions. They must be extremely valuable.” “You put them back where you found them.” Later, when he wrote to thank her for his visit—enclosing prints of some of his photographs—he mentioned the books again. This set Bella thinking. Why should that young puppy go poking round the house putting a price on everything? She wasn’t dead yet, Bella thought. And the more she thought of it, the more repugnant it became to think of Archie Banks carrying off her books to South Kensington and removing the chimneypieces and, as he threatened, writing an essay about the house for the Architectural Review. She had often heard that the books were valuable. Well, there were plenty of books in the library and she did not see why Archie Banks should profit by them. So she wrote a letter to a Dublin bookseller. He came to look through the library, and after a while he offered her twelve hundred pounds for the lot, or a thousand for the six books which had attracted Archie Banks’s attention. Bella was not sure that she had the right to sell things out of the house; a wholesale clearance would be noticed. So she kept the sermons and military history which made up most of the collection, the Dublin bookseller went off with the first editions, which eventually fetched rather less than he had given, and Bella was left with winter coming on and a thousand pounds in hand. It was then that it occurred to her to give a party. There were always several parties given round Ballingar at Christmastime, but of late years Bella had not been invited to any, partly because many of her neighbours had never spoken to her, partly because they did not think she would want to come, and partly because they would not have known what to do with her if she had. As a matter of fact she loved parties. She liked sitting down to supper in a noisy room, she liked dance music and gossip about which of the girls was pretty and who was in love with them, and she liked drink and having things brought to her by men in pink evening coats. And though she tried to console herself with contemptuous reflections about the ancestry of the hostesses, it annoyed her very much whenever she heard of a party being given in the neighbourhood to which she was not asked. And so it came about that, sitting with the Irish Times under the picture of Abraham Lincoln and gazing across the bare trees of the park to the hills beyond, Bella took it into her head to give a party. She rose immediately and hobbled across the room to the bellrope. Presently her butler came into the morning room; he wore the green baize apron in which he cleaned the silver and in his hand he carried the plate brush to emphasize the irregularity of the summons. “Was it yourself ringing?” he asked. “It was, who else?” “And I at the silver!” “Riley,” said Bella with some solemnity, “I propose to give a ball at Christmas.” “Indeed!” said her butler. “And for what would you want to be dancing at your age?” But as Bella adumbrated her idea, a sympathetic light began to glitter in Riley’s eye. “There’s not been such a ball in the country for twenty-five years. It will cost a fortune.” “It will cost a thousand pounds,” said Bella proudly. The preparations were necessarily stupendous. Seven new servants were recruited in the village and set to work dusting and cleaning and polishing, clearing out furniture and pulling up carpets. Their industry served only to reveal fresh requirements; plaster mouldings, long rotten, crumbled under the feather brooms, worm-eaten mahogany floorboards came up with the tin tacks; bare brick was disclosed behind the cabinets in the great drawing room. A second wave of the invasion brought painters, paperhangers and plumbers, and in a moment of enthusiasm Bella had the cornice and the capitals of the pillars in the hall regilded; windows were reglazed, banisters fitted into gaping sockets, and the stair carpet shifted so that the worn strips were less noticeable. In all these works Bella was indefatigable. She trotted from drawing room to hall, down the long gallery, up the staircase, admonishing the hireling servants, lending a hand with the lighter objects of furniture, sliding, when the time came, up and down the mahogany floor of the drawing room to work in the French chalk. She unloaded chests of silver in the attics, found long-forgotten services of china, went down with Riley into the cellars to count the few remaining and now flat and acid bottles of champagne. And in the evenings when the manual labourers had retired exhausted to their gross recreations, Bella sat up far into the night turning the pages of cookery books, comparing the estimates of rival caterers, inditing long and detailed letters to the agents for dance bands and, most important of all, drawing up her list of guests and addressing the high double piles of engraved cards that stood in her escritoire. Distance counts for little in Ireland. People will readily drive three hours to pay an afternoon call, and for a dance of such importance no journey was too great. Bella had her list painfully compiled from works of reference, Riley’s more up-to-date social knowledge and her own suddenly animated memory. Cheerfully, in a steady childish handwriting, she transferred the names to the cards and addressed the envelopes. It was the work of several late sittings. Many of those whose names were transcribed were dead or bedridden; some whom she just remembered seeing as small children were reaching retiring age in remote corners of the globe; many of the houses she wrote down were blackened shells, burned during the troubles and never rebuilt; some had “no one living in them, only farmers.” But at last, none too early, the last envelope was addressed. A final lap with the stamps and then later than usual she rose from the desk. Her limbs were stiff, her eyes dazzled, her tongue cloyed with the gum of the Free State post office; she felt a little dizzy, but she locked her desk that evening with the knowledge that the most serious part of the work of the party was over. There had been several notable and deliberate omissions from that list. “What’s all this I hear about Bella giving a party?” said Lady Gordon to Lady Mockstock. “I haven’t had a card.” “Neither have I yet. I hope the old thing hasn’t forgotten me. I certainly intend to go. I’ve never been inside the house. I believe she’s got some lovely things.” With true English reserve the lady whose husband had leased Mock Hall never betrayed the knowledge that any party was in the air at all at Fleacetown. As the last days approached Bella concentrated more upon her own appearance. She had bought few clothes of recent years, and the Dublin dressmaker with whom she used to deal had shut up shop. For a delirious instant she played with the idea of a journey to London and even Paris, and considerations of time alone obliged her to abandon it. In the end she discovered a shop to suit her, and purchased a very magnificent gown of crimson satin; to this she added long white gloves and satin shoes. There was no tiara, alas! among her jewels, but she unearthed large numbers of bright, nondescript Victorian rings, some chains and lockets, pearl brooches, turquoise earrings, and a collar of garnets. She ordered a coiffeur down from Dublin to dress her hair. On the day of the ball she woke early, slightly feverish with nervous excitement, and wriggled in bed till she was called, restlessly rehearsing in her mind every detail of the arrangements. Before noon she had been to supervise the setting of hundreds of candles in the sconces round the ballroom and supper room, and in the three great chandeliers of cut Waterford glass; she had seen the supper tables laid out with silver and glass and stood the massive wine coolers by the buffet; she had helped bank the staircase and hall with chrysanthemums. She had no luncheon that day, though Riley urged her with samples of the delicacies already arrived from the caterer’s. She felt a little faint; lay down for a short time, but soon rallied to sew with her own hands the crested buttons on to the liveries of the hired servants. The invitations were timed for eight o’clock. She wondered whether that were too early—she had heard tales of parties that began very late—but as the afternoon dragged on unendurably, and rich twilight enveloped the house, Bella became glad that she had set a short term on this exhausting wait. At six she went up to dress. The hairdresser was there with a bag full of tongs and combs. He brushed and coiled her hair and whiffed it up and generally manipulated it until it became orderly and formal and apparently far more copious. She put on all her jewellery and, standing before the cheval glass in her room, could not forbear a gasp of surprise. Then she limped downstairs. The house looked magnificent in the candlelight. The band was there, the twelve hired footmen, Riley in knee breeches and black silk stockings.

The union club at Matodi was in marked contrast to the hillside, bungalow dwellings of the majority of its members. It stood in the centre of the town, on the waterfront; a seventeenth-century Arab mansion built of massive whitewashed walls round a small court; latticed windows overhung the street from which, in former times, the womenfolk of a great merchant had watched the passing traffic; a heavy door, studded with brass bosses gave entrance to the dark shade of the court, where a little fountain sprayed from the roots of an enormous mango; and an open staircase of inlaid cedar-wood led to the cool interior. An Arab porter, clothed in a white gown scoured and starched like a Bishop’s surplice, crimson sash and tarboosh, sat drowsily at the gate. He rose in reverence as Mr. Reppington, the magistrate, and Mr. Bretherton, the sanitary-inspector, proceeded splendidly to the bar. In token of the cordiality of the Condominium, French officials were honorary members of the Club, and a photograph of a former French President (“We can’t keep changing it,” said Major Lepperidge, “every time the frogs care to have a shim-ozzle”) hung in the smoking room opposite the portrait of the Prince of Wales; except on Gala nights, however, they rarely availed themselves of their privilege. The single French journal to which the Club subscribed was La Vie Parisienne, which, on this particular evening, was in the hands of a small man of plebeian appearance, sitting alone in a basket chair. Reppington and Bretherton nodded their way forward. “Evening, Granger.” “Evening, Barker.” “Evening, Jagger,” and then in an audible undertone Bretherton inquired, “Who’s the chap in the corner with La Vie?” “Name of Brooks. Petrol or something.” “Ah.” “Pink gin?” “Ah.” “What sort of day?” “Bad show, rather. Trouble about draining the cricket field. No subsoil.” “Ah. Bad show.” The Goan barman put their drinks before them. Bretherton signed the chit. “Well, cheerio.” “Cheerio.” Mr. Brooks remained riveted upon La Vie Parisienne. Presently Major Lepperidge came in, and the atmosphere stiffened a little. (He was O.C. of the native levy, seconded from India.) “Evening, Major,” from civilians. “Good evening, sir,” from the military. “Evening. Evening. Evening. Phew. Just had a very fast set of lawner with young Kentish. Hot service. Gin and lime. By the way, Bretherton, the cricket field is looking pretty seedy.” “I know. No subsoil.” “I say, that’s a bad show. No subsoil. Well, do what you can, there’s a good fellow. It looks terrible. Quite bare and a great lake in the middle.” The Major took his gin and lime and moved towards a chair; suddenly he saw Mr. Brooks, and his authoritative air softened to unaccustomed amiability. “Why, hallo, Brooks,” he said. “How are you? Fine to see you back. Just had the pleasure of seeing your daughter at the tennis club. My missus wondered if you and she would care to come up and dine one evening. How about Thursday? Grand. She’ll be delighted. Good-night you fellows. Got to get a shower.” The occurrence was sensational. Bretherton and Reppington looked at one another in shocked surprise. Major Lepperidge, both in rank and personality, was the leading man in Matodi—in the whole of Azania indeed, with the single exception of the Chief Commissioner at Debra Dowa. It was inconceivable that Brooks should dine with Lepperidge. Bretherton himself had only dined there once and he was Government. “Hullo, Brooks,” said Reppington “Didn’t see you there behind your paper. Come and have one.” “Yes, Brooks,” said Bretherton. “Didn’t know you were back. Have a jolly leave? See any shows?” “It’s very kind of you, but I must be going. We arrived on Tuesday in the Ngoma. No, I didn’t see any shows. You see, I was down at Bournemouth most of the time.” “One before you go.” “No really, thanks, I must get back. My daughter will be waiting. Thanks all the same. See you both later.” Daughter…..? II There were eight Englishwomen in Matodi, counting Mrs. Bretherton’s two-year-old daughter; nine if you included Mrs. Macdonald (but no one did include Mrs. Macdonald who came from Bombay and betrayed symptoms of Asiatic blood. Besides, no one knew who Mr. Macdonald had been. Mrs. Macdonald kept an ill-frequented pension on the outskirts of the town named “The Bougainvillea”). All who were of marriageable age were married; they led lives under a mutual scrutiny too close and unremitting for romance. There were, however, seven unmarried Englishmen, three in Government service, three in commerce and one unemployed, who had fled to Matodi from his creditors in Kenya. (He sometimes spoke vaguely of “planting” or “prospecting,” but in the meantime drew a small remittance each month and hung amiably about the Club and the tennis courts.) Most of these bachelors were understood to have some girl at home; they kept photographs in their rooms, wrote long letters regularly, and took their leave with hints that when they returned they might not be alone. But they invariably were. Perhaps in precipitous eagerness for sympathy they painted too dark a picture of Azanian life; perhaps the Tropics made them a little addle-pated…..T sandals this year to the overwhelming influx of momentum, the benefits of wearing a reebok easytone can make my legs look more slender, and this section USA series is designed with simple and practical as the biggest selling point, personality girls can be considered to start. 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For three weeks Simon and Miss Grits (he always thought of her by this name in spite of all subsequent intimacies) worked together in complete harmony. His life was re-directed and transfigured. No longer did he lie in bed, glumly preparing himself for the coming day; no longer did he say every morning ‘I must get down to the country and finish that book’ and every evening find himself slinking back to the same urban flat; no longer did he sit over supper tables with Sylvia, idly bickering; no more listless explanations over the telephone. Instead he pursued a routine of incalculable variety, summoned by telephone at all hours to conferences which rarely assembled; sometimes to Hampstead, sometimes to the studios, once to Brighton. He spent long periods of work pacing up and down his sitting room, with Miss Grits pacing backwards and forwards along the other wall and Miss Dawkins obediently perched between them, as the two dictated, corrected and redrafted their scenario. There were meals at improbable times and vivid, unsentimental passages of love with Miss Grits. He ate irregular and improbable meals, bowling through the suburbs in Sir James’s car, pacing the carpet dictating to Miss Dawkins, perched in deserted lots upon scenery which seemed made to survive the collapse of civilization. He lapsed, like Miss Grits, into brief spells of death-like unconsciousness, often awakening, startled, to find that a street or desert or factory had come into being about him while he slept. The film meanwhile grew rapidly, daily putting out new shoots and changing under their eyes in a hundred unexpected ways. Each conference produced some radical change in the story. Miss Grits in her precise, unvariable voice would read out the fruits of their work. Sir James would sit with his head in his hand, rocking slightly from side to side and giving vent to occasional low moans and whimpers; round him sat the experts—production, direction, casting, continuity, cutting and costing managers, bright eyes, eager to attract the great man’s attention with some apt intrusion. “Well,” Sir James would say, “I think we can O.K. that. Any suggestions, gentlemen?” There would be a pause, until one by one the experts began to deliver their contributions … “I’ve been thinking, sir, that it won’t do to have the scene laid in Denmark. The public won’t stand for travel stuff. How about setting it in Scotland—then we could have some kilts and clan gathering scenes?” “Yes, that’s a very sensible suggestion. Make a note of that, Lent …” “I was thinking we’d better drop this character of the Queen. She’d much better be dead before the action starts. She hangs up the action. The public won’t stand for him abusing his mother.” “Yes, make a note of that, Lent.” “How would it be, sir, to make the ghost the Queen instead of the King …” “Yes, make a note of that, Lent …” “Don’t you think, sir, it would be better if Ophelia were Horatio’s sister. More poignant, if you see what I mean.” “Yes, make a note of that …” “I think we are losing sight of the essence of the story in the last sequence. After all, it is first and foremost a Ghost Story, isn’t it? …” And so from simple beginnings the story spread majestically. It was in the second week that Sir James, after, it must be admitted, considerable debate, adopted the idea of incorporating with it the story of Macbeth. Simon was opposed to the proposition at first, but the appeal of the three witches proved too strong. The title was then changed to The White Lady of Dunsinane, and he and Miss Grits settled down to a prodigious week’s work in rewriting their entire scenarios. IV The end came as suddenly as everything else in this remarkable episode. The third conference was being held at an hotel in the New Forest where Sir James happened to be staying; the experts had assembled by train, car and motor-bicycle at a moment’s notice and were tired and unresponsive. Miss Grits read the latest scenario; it took some time, for it had now reached the stage when it could be taken as “white script” ready for shooting. Sir James sat sunk in reflection longer than usual. When he raised his head, it was to utter the single word: “No.” “No?” “No, it won’t do. We must scrap the whole thing. We’ve got much too far from the original story. I can’t think why you need introduce Julius Caesar and King Arthur at all.” “But, sir, they were your own suggestions at the last conference.” “Were they? Well, I can’t help it. I must have been tired and not paying full attention … Besides, I don’t like the dialogue. It misses all the poetry of the original. What the public wants is Shakespeare, the whole of Shakespeare and nothing but Shakespeare. Now this scenario you’ve written is all very well in its way—but it’s not Shakespeare. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll use the play exactly as he wrote it and record from that. Make a note of it, Miss Grits.” “Then you’ll hardly require my services any more?” said Simon. “No, I don’t think I shall. Still, nice of you to have come.” Next morning Simon woke bright and cheerful as usual and was about to leap from his bed when he suddenly remembered the events of last night. There was nothing for him to do. An empty day lay before him. No Miss Grits, no Miss Dawkins, no scampering off to conferences or dictating of dialogue. He rang up Miss Grits and asked her to lunch with him. “No, quite impossible, I’m afraid. I have to do the continuity for a scenario of St. John’s Gospel before the end of the week. Pretty tough job. We’re setting it in Algeria so as to get the atmosphere. Off to Hollywood next month. Don’t suppose I shall see you again. Good-bye.” Simon lay in bed with all his energy slowly slipping away. Nothing to do. Well, he supposed, now was the time to go away to the country and get on with his novel. Or should he go abroad? Some quiet café-restaurant in the sun where he could work out those intractable last chapters. That was what he would do … sometime … the end of the week perhaps. Meanwhile he leaned over on his elbow, lifted the telephone and, asking for Sylvia’s number, prepared himself for twenty-five minutes’ acrimonious reconciliation.

Uh. He might have settled for less,” Rincewind conceded. “Ah. I shall know better next time. I can see I have a lot to learn. An idea occurs to me. Rincewind would you perhaps consent to be employed as a, I don’t know, perhaps the word “guide” would fit the circumstances? I think I could afford to pay you a rhinu a day.” Rincewind opened his mouth to reply but felt the words huddle together in his throat, reluctant to emerge in a world that was rapidly going mad. Twoflower blushed. “I have offended you,” he said. it was an impertinent request to make of a professional man such as yourself. Doubtless you have many projects you wish to return to- some works of high magic, no doubt…” “No,” said Rincewind faintly. “Not just at present. A rhinu, you say? One a day. Every day?” “I think perhaps in the circumstances I should make it one and one-half rhinu per day. Plus any out-of-pocket expenses, of course.” The wizard rallied magnificently. “That will be fine,” he Said. “Great.” Twoflower reached into his pouch and took out a large round gold object, glanced at it for a moment, and slipped it back. Rincewind didn’t get a chance to see it properly. “I think,” said the tourist, “that I would like a little sleep now. It was a long crossing. And then perhaps you would care to call back at noon and we can take a look at the city.” “Sure.” “Then please be good enough to ask the innkeeper to Show me to my room.” Rincewind did so, and watched the nervous Broadman, who had arrived at a gallop from some back room, lead the way up the wooden steps behind the bar. After a few seconds the luggage got up and pattered across the floor after them. Then the wizard looked down at the six big coins in his hand. Twoflower had insisted on paying his first four days’ wages in advance. Hugh nodded and smiled encouragingly. Rincewind snarled at him. As a student wizard Rincewind had never achieved high marks in precognition, but now unused circuits in his brain were throbbing and the future might as well have been engraved in bright colours on his eyeballs. The space between his shoulder blades began to itch. The sensible thing to do, he knew, was to buy a horse. It would have to be a fast one, and expensive - offhand, Rincewind couldn’t think of any horse-dealer he knew who was rich enough to give change out of almost a whole ounce of gold. And then, of course, the other five coins would help him set up a useful practice at some safe distance, say two hundred miles. That would be the sensible thing. But what would happen to Twoflower, all alone in a city where even the cockroaches had an unerring instinct for gold? A man would have to be a real heel to leave him. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork smiled, but with his mouth only. “The Hub Gate, you say?” he murmured. The guard captain saluted smartly. “Aye, lord. We had to shoot the horse before he would stop.” “Which, by a fairly direct route, brings you here,” said the Patrician, looking down at Rincewind. “And what have you got to say for yourself?” It was rumoured that an entire wing of the Patrician’s palace was filled with clerks who spent their days collating and updating all the information collected by their master’s exquisitely organized spy system. Rincewind didn’t doubt it. He glanced towards the balcony that ran down one side of the audience room. A sudden run, a nimble jump - a sudden hail of crossbow quarrels. He shuddered. The Patrician cradled his chins in a beringed hand, and regarded the wizard with eyes as small and hard as beads. “Let me see,” he said. “Oathbreaking, the theft of a horse, uttering false coinage - yes, I think it’s the Arena for you, Rincewind.” This was too much. “I didn’t steal the horse! I bought it fairly!” “But with false coinage. 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He stood up and made his way to the trio. “May I be of assistance?” he ventured. “Shove off, Rincewind,” snarled Broadman. “I only thought it might be useful to address this gentleman in his own tongue,” said the wizard gently. “He’s doing all right on his own,” said the innkeeper, but took a few steps backward. Rincewind smiled politely at the stranger and tried a few words of Chimeran. He prided himself on his fluency in the tongue, but the stranger only looked bemused. “It won’t work,” said Hugh knowledgeably, “it’s the book, you see. It tells him what to say. Magic.” Rincewind switched to High Borogravian, to Vanglemesht, Sumtri and even Black Oroogu, the language with no nouns and only one adjective, which is obscene. Each was met with polite incomprehension. In desperation he tried heathen Trob, and the little man’s face split into a delighted grin. “At last!” he said. “My good sir! This is remarkable!” (Although in Trob the last word in fact became “a thing which may happen but once in the usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower Slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of the firegods or so it is said.”). “What was all that?” said Broadman suspiciously. “What did the innkeeper say?” said the little man. Rincewind swallowed. “Broadman,” he said. “Two mugs of your best ale, please.” “You can understand him?” “Oh, sure.” “Tell him tell him he’s very welcome. Tell him breakfast is - uh - one gold piece.” For a moment Broadman’s face looked as though some vast internal struggle was going on, and then he added with a burst of generosity. “I’ll throw in yours, too.” “Stranger,” said Rincewind levelly. “if you stay here you will be knifed or poisoned by nightfall. But don’t stop smiling, or so will I.” “Oh, come now,” said the stranger, looking around. “This looks like a delightful place. A genuine Morporkean tavern. I’ve heard so much about them, you know. All these quaint old beams. And so reasonable, too.” Rincewind glanced around quickly, in case some leakage of enchantment from the Magician’s Quarter across the river had momentarily transported them to some other place. No - this was still the interior of the Drum, its walls stained with smoke, its floor a compost of old rushes and nameless beetles, its sour beer not so much purchased as merely hired for a while. He tried to fit the image around the word “quaint”, or rather the nearest Trob equivalent, which was “that pleasant oddity of design found in the little coral houses of the sponge-eating pigmies on the Orohai peninsular”. His mind reeled back from the effort. The visitor went on, “My name is Twoflower,” and extended his hand. Instinctively, the other three looked down to see if there was a coin in it. “Pleased to meet you,” said Rincewind. “I’m Rincewind. Look, I wasn’t joking. This is a tough place.” “Good! Exactly what I wanted!” “Eh?” “What is this stuff in the mugs?” “This? Beer. Thanks, Broadman. Yes. Beer. You know. Beer.” “Ah, the so-typical drink. A small gold piece will be sufficient payment, do you think? I do not want to cause offense.” It was already half out of his purse. “Yarrt,” croaked Rincewind. “I mean, no, it won’t cause Offense.” “Good. You say this is a tough place. Frequented, you mean, by heroes and men of adventure?” Rincewind considered this. “Yes?” he managed. “Excellent. I would like to meet some.” An explanation occurred to the wizard. “Ah,” he said. “You’ve come to hire mercenaries (”warriors who fight for the tribe with most milknut-meal”)?” “Oh no. I just want to meet them. So that when I get home I can say that I did it.” Rincewind thought that a meeting with most of the Drum’s clientele would mean that Twoflower never went home again, unless he lived downriver and happened to float past. “Where is your home?” he inquired. Broadman had slipped away into some back room, he noticed. Hugh was watching them suspiciously from a nearby table. “Have you heard of the city of Des Palargic?” “Well, I didn’t spend much time in Trob. I was just passing through, you know-” “Oh, it’s not in Trob. I speak Trob because there are many beTrobi sailors in our ports. Des Palargic is the major seaport of the Agatean Empire.” “Never heard of it, I’m afraid.” Twoflower raised his eyebrows. “No? It is quite big. You sail turnwise from the Brown Islands for about a week and there it is. Are you all right?” He hurried around the table and patted the wizard on the back. Rincewind choked on his beer-The Counterweight Continent! Three streets away an old man dropped a coin into a saucer of acid and swirled it gently. Broadman waited impatiently, ill at ease in a room made noisome by vats and bubbling beakers and lined with shelves containing shadowy shapes suggestive of skulls and stuffed impossibilities. “Well?” he demanded. “One cannot hurry these things,” said the old alchemist peevishly. “Assaying takes time. Ah.” He prodded the saucer, where the coin now lay in a swirl of green colour. He made some calculations on a scrap of parchment. “Exceptionally interesting,” he said at last. “Is it genuine?” The old man pursed his lips. “it depends on how you define the term,” he said. “if you mean: is this coin the same as, say, a fifty-dollar piece, then the answer is no.” “I knew” it,” screamed the innkeeper, and started towards the door. “I’m not sure that I’m making myself clear,” said the alchemist. Broadman turned round angrily. “What do you mean?” “Well, you see, what with one thing and another our coinage has been somewhat watered, over the years. The gold content of the average coin is barely four parts in twelve, the balance being made up of silver, copper-” “What of it?” “I said this coin isn’t like ours. It is pure gold.” After Broadman had left, at a run, the alchemist spent some time staring at the ceiling. Then he drew out a very small piece of thin parchment, rummaged for a pen amongst the debris on his workbench, and wrote a very short, small, message. Then he went over to his cages of white doves, black cockerels and other laboratory animals. From one cage he removed a glossy coated rat, rolled the parchment into the phial attached to a hind leg, and let the animal go. It sniffed around the floor for a moment, then disappeared down a hole in the far wall. At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune-teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewellery, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour. Also at about the same moment as the homing rat disappeared into the maze of runs under the city, scurrying along in faultless obedience to an ancient instinct, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork picked up the letters delivered that morning by albatross. He looked pensively at the topmost one again, and summoned his chief of spies. And in the Broken Drum Rincewind was listening open-mouthed as Twoflower talked. “So I decided to see for myself,” the little man was saying. “Eight years’ saving up, this has cost me. But worth every half-rhinu. I mean, here I am. In Ankh-Morpork. Famed in song and story, I mean. In the streets that have known the tread of Hemic Whiteblade. Hrun the Barbarian, and Bravd the Hublander and the Weasel… It’s all just like I imagined, you know.” Rincewind’s face was a mask of fascinated horror. “I just couldn’t stand it any more back in Des Pelargic,” Twoflower went on blithely, “sitting at a desk all day, just adding up columns of figures, just a pension to look forward to at the end of it… where’s the romance in that? Twoflower, I thought, it’s now or never. You don’t just have to listen to stories. You can go there. Now’s the time to stop hanging around the docks listening to sailors’ tales. So I compiled a phrase book and bought a passage on the next ship to the Brown Islands.” “No guards?” murmured Rincewind. “No. Why? What have I got that’s worth stealing?” Rincewind coughed. “You have, uh, gold,” he said. “Barely two thousand rhinu. Hardly enough to keep a man alive for more than a month or two. At home, that is. I imagine they might stretch a bit further here.” “Would a rhinu be one of those big gold coins?” said Rincewind. “Yes.” Twoflower looked worriedly at the wizard over the top of his strange seeing-lenses. “Will two thousand be sufficient, do you think?” “Yarrrt,” croaked Rincewind. “I mean, yes sufficient . ” “Good.” “Um. Is everyone in the Agatean Empire as rich as you?” “Me? Rich? Bless you, whatever put that idea into your head? “I am but a poor clerk! Did I pay the innkeeper too much, do you think?” Twoflower added.

Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. Where it licked the Wizards’ Quarter it burned blue and green and was even laced with strange sparks of the eighth colour, octarine; where its outriders found their way into the vats and oil stores all along Merchants Street it progressed in a series of blazing fountains and explosions; in the Streets of the perfume blenders it burned with a sweetness; where it touched bundles of rare and dry herbs in the storerooms of the drugmasters it made men go mad and talk to God. By now the whole of downtown Ankh-Morpork was alight, and the richer and worthier citizens of Ankh on the far bank were bravely responding to the situation by feverishly demolishing the bridges. But already the ships in the Morpork docks - laden with grain, cotton and timber, and coated with tar - were blazing merrily and, their moorings burnt to ashes, were breasting the river Ankh on the ebb tide, igniting riverside palaces and bowers as they drifted like drowning fireflies towards the sea. In any case, sparks were riding the breeze and touching down far across the river in hidden gardens and remote brickyards. The smoke from the merry burning rose miles high, in a wind-sculpted black column that could be seen across the whole of the Discworld. It was certainly impressive from the cool, dark hilltop a few leagues away, where two figures were watching with considerable interest. The taller of the pair was chewing on a chicken leg and leaning on a sword that was only marginally shorter than the average man. If it wasn’t for the air of wary intelligence about him it might have been supposed that he was a barbarian from the hubland wastes. His partner was much shorter and wrapped from head to toe in a brown cloak. Later, when he has occasion to move, it will be seen that he moves lightly, cat-like. The two had barely exchanged a word in the last twenty minutes except for a short and inconclusive argument as to whether a particularly powerful explosion had been the oil bond store or the workshop of Kerible the Enchanter. Money hinged on the fact. Now the big man finished gnawing at the bone and tossed it into the grass, smiling ruefully. “There go all those little alleyways,” he said. “I liked them.” “All the treasure houses,” said the small man. He added thoughtfully, “Do gems burn, I wonder? ‘Tis said they’re kin to coal.” “All the gold, melting and running down the gutters,” said the big one, ignoring him. “And all the wine, boiling in the barrels.” “There were rats,” said his brown companion. “Rats, I’ll grant you.” “It was no place to be in high summer.” “That, too. One can’t help feeling, though, a well, a momentary-” He trailed off, then brightened. “We owed old Fredor at the Crimson Leech eight silver pieces,” he added. The little man nodded. They were silent for a while as a whole new series of explosions carved a red line across a hitherto dark section of the greatest city in the world. Then the big man stirred “Weasel?” “Yes?” “I wonder who started it?” The small swordsman known as the Weasel said nothing. He was watching the road in the ruddy light. Few had come that way since the widershins gate had been one of the first to collapse in a shower of white-hot embers. But two were coming up it now. The Weasel’s eyes always at their sharpest in gloom and halflight, made out the shapes of two mounted men and some sort of low beast behind them. Doubtless a rich merchant escaping with as much treasure as he could lay frantic hands on. The Weasel said as much to his companion, who sighed. “The status of footpad ill suits us,” said the barbarian, “but as you say, times are hard and there are no soft beds tonight.” He shifted his grip on his sword and, as the leading rider drew near, stepped out onto the road with a hand held up and his face set in a grin nicely calculated to reassure yet threaten. “Your pardon, sir-” he began. The rider reined in his horse and drew back his hood. The big man looked into a face blotched with superficial burns and punctuated by tufts of singed beard. Even the eyebrows had gone. “Bugger off,” said the face. “You’re Bravd the Hublander, aren’t you?” Bravd became aware that he had fumbled the initiative. “Just go away, will you?” said the rider. “I just haven’t got time for you, do you understand?” He looked around and added: “That goes for your shadow-loving fleabag partner too, wherever he’s hiding.” The Weasel stepped up to the horse and peered at the dishevelled figure. “Why, it’s Rincewind the wizard, isn’t it?” he said in tones of delight, meanwhile filing the wizard’s description of him in his memory for leisurely vengeance. “I thought I recognized the voice.” Bravd spat and sheathed his sword. It was seldom worth tangling with wizards, they so rarely had any treasure worth speaking of. “He talks pretty big for a gutter wizard,” he muttered. “You don’t understand at all,” said the wizard wearily. “I’m so scared of you my spine has turned to jelly, it’s just that I’m suffering from an overdose of terror right now. 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I was thoroughly weary and knew I needed rest, but even though I went to bed and closed my eyes, I couldn’t sleep. All day Sunday, I sat in a chair and surveyed the beach through the front window. I was too tired to work but too frustrated about not working to sleep. That evening, after having done nothing all day, I stumbled down to the diner and took my usual seat. The place was empty save for one old man sitting in the far corner, reading a book while eating his dinner. This solitary character looked somewhat like Stullin for his white beard, and at first glance, had I not known better, I could’ve sworn the book he was reading was The Centrifugal Rickshaw Dancer. I didn’t want to get close enough to find out for fear he might strike up a conversation. The waitress came and took my order. When she was finished writing on her pad, she said, “You look exhausted tonight.” I nodded. “You need to sleep,” she said. “I have work to do,” I told her. “Well, then, let me bring you some coffee.” I laughed. “You know, I’ve never had a cup of coffee in my life,” I said. “Impossible,” she said. “It looks to me like tonight might be a good time to start.” “I’ll give it a try,” I told her, and this seemed to make her happy. While I ate, I glanced through my notebook and tried to reestablish for myself the architecture of the fugue. As always, when I looked at my notes, everything was crystal clear, but when it came time to continue on the score, every potential further step seemed the wrong way to go. Somewhere in the midst of my musing, I pushed my plate away and drew toward me the cup and saucer. My usual drink was tea, and I’d forgotten I had changed my order. I took a sip, and the dark, bitter taste of black coffee startled me. I looked up, and there was Anna, staring at me, having just lowered a cup away from her lips. In her eyes I saw a glint of recognition, as if she were actually seeing me, and I’m sure she saw the same in mine. I whispered, “I see you.” She smiled. “I see you too,” she said. I would have been less surprised if a dog had spoken to me. Sitting dumbfounded, I reached slowly out toward where she seemed to sit across from me in the booth. As my hand approached, she leaned back away from it. “I’ve been watching you for years,” she said. “The coffee?” I said. She nodded. “You are a synesthete, am I right?” “Yes,” I said. “But you’re a figment of my imagination, a product of a neurological anomaly.” Here she laughed out loud. “No,” she said, “you are.” After our initial exchange, neither of us spoke. I was in a mild state of shock, I believe. “This can’t be,” I kept repeating in my mind, but there she was, and I could hear her breathing. Her image appeared even sharper than it had previously under the influence of the coffee ice cream. And now, with the taste that elicited her presence uncompromised by cream and sugar and the cold, she remained without dissipating for a good few minutes before beginning to mist at the edges and I had to take another sip to sharpen the focus. When I brought my cup up to drink, she also did at the same exact time, as if she were a reflection, as if I were her reflection, and we both smiled. “I can’t speak to you where I am. They’ll think I’ve lost my mind,” I whispered. “I’m in the same situation,” she said. “Give me a half hour and then have another cup of coffee, and I’ll be able to speak to you in private.” She nodded in agreement and watched as I called for the check. By the time the waitress arrived at my booth, Anna had dissolved into a vague cloud, like the exhalation of a smoker. It didn’t matter, as I knew she couldn’t be seen by anyone else. As my bill was being tallied, I ordered three cups of coffee to go. “That coffee is something, isn’t it?” said the waitress. “I swear by it. Amazing you’ve never had any up to this point. My blood is three-quarters coffee, I drink so much of it,” she said. “Wonderful stuff,” I agreed. Wonderful it was, for it had awakened my senses, and I walked through the freezing, windy night, carrying in a box my containers of elixir, with all the joy of a child leaving school on Friday afternoon. The absurdity of the whole affair didn’t escape me, and I laughed out loud remembering my whispered plan to wait a half hour and then drink another cup. The conspiratorial nature of it excited me, and I realized for the first time since seeing her that Anna had matured and grown more beautiful in the years I had forsaken her. Back at the bungalow, I put the first of the large Styrofoam containers into the microwave in the kitchen and heated it for no more than thirty seconds. I began to worry that perhaps in Anna’s existence time was altogether different and a half hour for me might be two or three or a day for her. The instant the bell sounded on the appliance, I took the cup out, seated myself at the small kitchen table and drank a long draught of the dark potion. Before I could put the cup down, she was there, sitting in the seat opposite me. “I know your name is Anna,” I said to her. “I saw it on one of your drawing pads.” She flipped her hair behind her ear on the left side and asked, “What’s yours?” “William,” I said. Then I told her about the coffee ice cream and the first time I encountered her image. “I remember,” she said, “when I was a child of nine, I snuck a sip of my father’s coffee he had left in the living room, and I saw you sitting at a piano. I thought you were a ghost. I ran to get my mother to show her, but when I returned you’d vanished. She thought little of it since the synesthesia was always prompting me to describe things that made no sense to her.” “When did you realize it was the coffee?” I asked. “Oh, some time later. I again was given a taste of it at breakfast one morning, and there you were, sitting at our dining room table, looking rather forlorn. It took every ounce of restraint not to blurt out that you were there. Then it started to make sense to me. After that, I would try to see you as much as possible. You were often very sad when you were younger. I know that.” The look on her face, one of true concern for me, almost brought tears to my eyes. She was a witness to my life. I hadn’t been as alone as I had always thought. “You’re a terrific artist,” I said. She smiled. “I’m great with a pencil, but my professors are demanding a piece in color. That’s what I’m working on now.” Intermittently in the conversation we’d stop and take sips of coffee to keep the connection vital. As it turned out, she too had escaped her normal routine and taken a place in order to work on a project for her final portfolio review. We discovered all manner of synchronicities between our lives. She admitted to me that she’d also been a loner as a child and that her parents had a hard time dealing with her synesthetic condition. As she put it, “Until we discovered the reality of it, I think they thought I was crazy.” She laughed, but I could tell by the look in her eyes how deeply it had affected her. “Have you ever told anyone about me?” I asked. “Only my therapist,” she said. “I was relieved when he told me he’d heard of rare cases like mine.” This revelation brought me up short, for Stullin had told me he had never encountered anything of the sort in the literature. The implications of this inconsistency momentarily reminded me that she was not real, but I quickly shoved the notion from my thoughts and continued the conversation. That night, by parsing out the coffee I had, and she doing the same, we stayed together until two in the morning, telling each other about our lives, our creative ideas, our dreams for the future. We found that our synesthetic experiences were similar and that our sense impressions were often transposed with the same results. For instance, for both her and me, the aroma of new-mown grass was circular and the sound of a car horn tasted of citrus. She told me that her father was an amateur musician who loved the piano and classical music. In the middle of my recounting for her the intricacies of the fugue I was planning, she suddenly looked up from her cup and said, “Oh no, I’m out of coffee.” I looked down at my own cup and realized I’d just taken the last sip. “Tomorrow at noon,” she said as her image weakened. “Yes,” I yelled, afraid she wouldn’t hear me. Then she became a phantom, a miasma, a notion, and I was left staring at the wall of the kitchen. With her gone, I could not sit still for long. All the coffee I’d drunk was coursing through me, and because my frail system had never before known the stimulant, my hands literally shook from it. I knew sleep was out of the question, so after walking around the small rooms of the bungalow for an hour, I sat down to my fugue to see what I could do. Immediately, I picked up the trail of where I had been headed before Saturday’s mental block had set in. Everything was piercingly clear to me, and I could hear the music I was noting in various colors as if there were a tape of the piece I was creating playing as I created it. I worked like a demon, quickly, unerringly, and the ease with which the answers to the musical problems presented themselves gave me great confidence and made my decisions ingenious. Finally, around eight in the morning (I hadn’t noticed the sunrise), the coffee took its toll on me, and I became violently ill. The stomach pains, the headache, were excruciating. At ten, I vomited, and that relieved the symptoms somewhat. At eleven A.M., I was at the diner, buying another four cups of coffee. The waitress tried to interest me in breakfast, but I said I wasn’t hungry. She told me I didn’t look well, and I tried to laugh off her concern. When she pressed the matter, I made some surly comment to her that I can’t now remember, and she understood I was interested in nothing but the coffee. I took my hoard and went directly to the beach. The temperature was milder that day, and the fresh air cleared my head. I sat in the shelter of a deep hollow amidst the dunes to block the wind, drank, and watched Anna at work, wherever she was, on her project—a large, colorful abstract drawing. After spying on her for a few minutes, I realized that the composition of the piece, its arrangement of color, presented itself to me as the melodic line of Symphony no. 8 in B Minor, by Franz Schubert. This amused me at first, to think that my own musical knowledge was inherent in the existence of her world, that my imagination was its essence. What was also interesting was that such a minor interest of mine, Schubert, should manifest itself. I supposed that any aspect of my life, no matter how minor, was fodder for this imaginative process. It struck me just as quickly, though, that I didn’t want this to be so. I wanted her to be apart from me, her own separate entity, for without that, what would her friendship mean? I physically shook my head to rid myself of the idea. When at noon she appeared next to me in my nest among the dunes, I’d already managed to forget this worm in the apple. We spent the morning together talking and laughing, strolling along the edge of the ocean, climbing on the rocks at the point. When the coffee ran low around three, we returned to the diner for me to get more. I asked them to make me two whole pots and just pour them into large, plastic take-out containers. The waitress said nothing but shook her head. In the time I was on my errand, Anna, in her own world, brewed another vat of it. We met up back at my bungalow, and as evening came on, we took out our respective projects and worked together, across from each other at the kitchen table. In her presence, my musical imagination was on fire, and she admitted to me that she saw for the first time the overarching structure of her drawing and where she was headed with it. At one point, I became so immersed in the work, I reached out and picked up what I thought would be one of my crayons but instead turned out to be a violet pastel. I didn’t own pastels, Anna did. “Look,” I said to her, and at that moment felt a wave of dizziness pass over me. A headache was beginning behind my eyes. She lifted her gaze from her work and saw me holding the violet stick. We both sat quietly, in awe of its implications. Slowly, she put her hand out across the table toward me. I dropped the pastel and reached toward her. Our hands met, and I swear I could feel her fingers entangled with mine. “What does this mean, William?” she said with a note of fear in her voice and let go of me. As I stood up, I lost my balance and needed to support myself by clutching the back of the chair. She also stood, and as I approached her, she backed away. “No, this isn’t right,” she said.

The evening had afforded Edmund little pleasure. Miss Crawford had been in gay spirits when they first danced together, but it was not her gaiety that could do him good: it rather sank than raised his comfort; and afterwards, for he found himself still impelled to seek her again, she had absolutely pained him by her manner of speaking of the profession to which he was now on the point of belonging. They had talked, and they had been silent; he had reasoned, she had ridiculed; and they had parted at last with mutual vexation. Fanny, not able to refrain entirely from observing them, had seen enough to be tolerably satisfied. It was barbarous to be happy when Edmund was suffering. Yet some happiness must and would arise from the very conviction that he did suffer. When her two dances with him were over, her inclination and strength for more were pretty well at an end; and Sir Thomas, having seen her walk rather than dance down the shortening set, breathless, and with her hand at her side, gave his orders for her sitting down entirely. From that time Mr. Crawford sat down likewise. “Poor Fanny!” cried William, coming for a moment to visit her, and working away his partner’s fan as if for life, “how soon she is knocked up! Why, the sport is but just begun. I hope we shall keep it up these two hours. How can you be tired so soon?” “So soon! my good friend,” said Sir Thomas, producing his watch with all necessary caution; “it is three o’clock, and your sister is not used to these sort of hours.” “Well, then, Fanny, you shall not get up to-morrow before I go. Sleep as long as you can, and never mind me.” “Oh! William.” “What! Did she think of being up before you set off?” “Oh! yes, sir,” cried Fanny, rising eagerly from her seat to be nearer her uncle; “I must get up and breakfast with him. It will be the last time, you know; the last morning.” “You had better not. He is to have breakfasted and be gone by half-past nine. Mr. Crawford, I think you call for him at half-past nine?” Fanny was too urgent, however, and had too many tears in her eyes for denial; and it ended in a gracious “Well, well!” which was permission. “Yes, half-past nine,” said Crawford to William as the latter was leaving them, “and I shall be punctual, for there will be no kind sister to get up for _me_.” And in a lower tone to Fanny, “I shall have only a desolate house to hurry from. Your brother will find my ideas of time and his own very different to-morrow.” After a short consideration, Sir Thomas asked Crawford to join the early breakfast party in that house instead of eating alone: he should himself be of it; and the readiness with which his invitation was accepted convinced him that the suspicions whence, he must confess to himself, this very ball had in great measure sprung, were well founded. Mr. Crawford was in love with Fanny. He had a pleasing anticipation of what would be. His niece, meanwhile, did not thank him for what he had just done. She had hoped to have William all to herself the last morning. It would have been an unspeakable indulgence. But though her wishes were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On the contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted, or to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that she was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point so far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed. Shortly afterward, Sir Thomas was again interfering a little with her inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. “Advise” was his word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to rise, and, with Mr. Crawford’s very cordial adieus, pass quietly away; stopping at the entrance-door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, “one moment and no more,” to view the happy scene, and take a last look at the five or six determined couple who were still hard at work; and then, creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus, sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful. In thus sending her away, Sir Thomas perhaps might not be thinking merely of her health. 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Fanny, in great astonishment and confusion, would have returned the present instantly. To take what had been the gift of another person, of a brother too, impossible! it must not be! and with an eagerness and embarrassment quite diverting to her companion, she laid down the necklace again on its cotton, and seemed resolved either to take another or none at all. Miss Crawford thought she had never seen a prettier consciousness. “My dear child,” said she, laughing, “what are you afraid of? Do you think Henry will claim the necklace as mine, and fancy you did not come honestly by it? or are you imagining he would be too much flattered by seeing round your lovely throat an ornament which his money purchased three years ago, before he knew there was such a throat in the world? or perhaps”–looking archly– “you suspect a confederacy between us, and that what I am now doing is with his knowledge and at his desire?” With the deepest blushes Fanny protested against such a thought. “Well, then,” replied Miss Crawford more seriously, but without at all believing her, “to convince me that you suspect no trick, and are as unsuspicious of compliment as I have always found you, take the necklace and say no more about it. Its being a gift of my brother’s need not make the smallest difference in your accepting it, as I assure you it makes none in my willingness to part with it. He is always giving me something or other. I have such innumerable presents from him that it is quite impossible for me to value or for him to remember half. And as for this necklace, I do not suppose I have worn it six times: it is very pretty, but I never think of it; and though you would be most heartily welcome to any other in my trinket-box, you have happened to fix on the very one which, if I have a choice, I would rather part with and see in your possession than any other. Say no more against it, I entreat you. Such a trifle is not worth half so many words.” Fanny dared not make any farther opposition; and with renewed but less happy thanks accepted the necklace again, for there was an expression in Miss Crawford’s eyes which she could not be satisfied with. It was impossible for her to be insensible of Mr. Crawford’s change of manners. She had long seen it. He evidently tried to please her: he was gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace–she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend. Reflecting and doubting, and feeling that the possession of what she had so much wished for did not bring much satisfaction, she now walked home again, with a change rather than a diminution of cares since her treading that path before. The ball began. It was rather honour than happiness to Fanny, for the first dance at least: her partner was in excellent spirits, and tried to impart them to her; but she was a great deal too much frightened to have any enjoyment till she could suppose herself no longer looked at. Young, pretty, and gentle, however, she had no awkwardnesses that were not as good as graces, and there were few persons present that were not disposed to praise her. She was attractive, she was modest, she was Sir Thomas’s niece, and she was soon said to be admired by Mr. Crawford. It was enough to give her general favour. Sir Thomas himself was watching her progress down the dance with much complacency; he was proud of his niece; and without attributing all her personal beauty, as Mrs. Norris seemed to do, to her transplantation to Mansfield, he was pleased with himself for having supplied everything else: education and manners she owed to him. Miss Crawford saw much of Sir Thomas’s thoughts as he stood, and having, in spite of all his wrongs towards her, a general prevailing desire of recommending herself to him, took an opportunity of stepping aside to say something agreeable of Fanny. Her praise was warm, and he received it as she could wish, joining in it as far as discretion, and politeness, and slowness of speech would allow, and certainly appearing to greater advantage on the subject than his lady did soon afterwards, when Mary, perceiving her on a sofa very near, turned round before she began to dance, to compliment her on Miss Price’s looks. “Yes, she does look very well,” was Lady Bertram’s placid reply. “Chapman helped her to dress. I sent Chapman to her.” Not but that she was really pleased to have Fanny admired; but she was so much more struck with her own kindness in sending Chapman to her, that she could not get it out of her head. Miss Crawford knew Mrs. Norris too well to think of gratifying _her_ by commendation of Fanny; to her, it was as the occasion offered–”Ah! ma’am, how much we want dear Mrs. Rushworth and Julia to-night!” and Mrs. Norris paid her with as many smiles and courteous words as she had time for, amid so much occupation as she found for herself in making up card-tables, giving hints to Sir Thomas, and trying to move all the chaperons to a better part of the room. Miss Crawford blundered most towards Fanny herself in her intentions to please. She meant to be giving her little heart a happy flutter, and filling her with sensations of delightful self-consequence; and, misinterpreting Fanny’s blushes, still thought she must be doing so when she went to her after the two first dances, and said, with a significant look, “Perhaps _you_ can tell me why my brother goes to town to-morrow? He says he has business there, but will not tell me what. The first time he ever denied me his confidence! But this is what we all come to. All are supplanted sooner or later. Now, I must apply to you for information. Pray, what is Henry going for?” Fanny protested her ignorance as steadily as her embarrassment allowed. “Well, then,” replied Miss Crawford, laughing, “I must suppose it to be purely for the pleasure of conveying your brother, and of talking of you by the way.” Fanny was confused, but it was the confusion of discontent; while Miss Crawford wondered she did not smile, and thought her over-anxious, or thought her odd, or thought her anything rather than insensible of pleasure in Henry’s attentions. Fanny had a good deal of enjoyment in the course of the evening; but Henry’s attentions had very little to do with it. She would much rather _not_ have been asked by him again so very soon, and she wished she had not been obliged to suspect that his previous inquiries of Mrs. Norris, about the supper hour, were all for the sake of securing her at that part of the evening. But it was not to be avoided: he made her feel that she was the object of all; though she could not say that it was unpleasantly done, that there was indelicacy or ostentation in his manner; and sometimes, when he talked of William, he was really not unagreeable, and shewed even a warmth of heart which did him credit. But still his attentions made no part of her satisfaction. She was happy whenever she looked at William, and saw how perfectly he was enjoying himself, in every five minutes that she could walk about with him and hear his account of his partners; she was happy in knowing herself admired; and she was happy in having the two dances with Edmund still to look forward to, during the greatest part of the evening, her hand being so eagerly sought after that her indefinite engagement with _him_ was in continual perspective. She was happy even when they did take place; but not from any flow of spirits on his side, or any such expressions of tender gallantry as had blessed the morning. His mind was fagged, and her happiness sprung from being the friend with whom it could find repose. “I am worn out with civility,” said he. “I have been talking incessantly all night, and with nothing to say. But with _you_, Fanny, there may be peace. You will not want to be talked to. Let us have the luxury of silence.” Fanny would hardly even speak her agreement. A weariness, arising probably, in great measure, from the same feelings which he had acknowledged in the morning, was peculiarly to be respected, and they went down their two dances together with such sober tranquillity as might satisfy any looker-on that Sir Thomas had been bringing up no wife for his younger son.

Thursday was the day of the ball; and on Wednesday morning Fanny, still unable to satisfy herself as to what she ought to wear, determined to seek the counsel of the more enlightened, and apply to Mrs. Grant and her sister, whose acknowledged taste would certainly bear her blameless; and as Edmund and William were gone to Northampton, and she had reason to think Mr. Crawford likewise out, she walked down to the Parsonage without much fear of wanting an opportunity for private discussion; and the privacy of such a discussion was a most important part of it to Fanny, being more than half-ashamed of her own solicitude. She met Miss Crawford within a few yards of the Parsonage, just setting out to call on her, and as it seemed to her that her friend, though obliged to insist on turning back, was unwilling to lose her walk, she explained her business at once, and observed, that if she would be so kind as to give her opinion, it might be all talked over as well without doors as within. Miss Crawford appeared gratified by the application, and after a moment’s thought, urged Fanny’s returning with her in a much more cordial manner than before, and proposed their going up into her room, where they might have a comfortable coze, without disturbing Dr. and Mrs. Grant, who were together in the drawing-room. It was just the plan to suit Fanny; and with a great deal of gratitude on her side for such ready and kind attention, they proceeded indoors, and upstairs, and were soon deep in the interesting subject. Miss Crawford, pleased with the appeal, gave her all her best judgment and taste, made everything easy by her suggestions, and tried to make everything agreeable by her encouragement. The dress being settled in all its grander parts– “But what shall you have by way of necklace?” said Miss Crawford. “Shall not you wear your brother’s cross?” And as she spoke she was undoing a small parcel, which Fanny had observed in her hand when they met. Fanny acknowledged her wishes and doubts on this point: she did not know how either to wear the cross, or to refrain from wearing it. She was answered by having a small trinket-box placed before her, and being requested to chuse from among several gold chains and necklaces. Such had been the parcel with which Miss Crawford was provided, and such the object of her intended visit: and in the kindest manner she now urged Fanny’s taking one for the cross and to keep for her sake, saying everything she could think of to obviate the scruples which were making Fanny start back at first with a look of horror at the proposal. “You see what a collection I have,” said she; “more by half than I ever use or think of. I do not offer them as new. I offer nothing but an old necklace. You must forgive the liberty, and oblige me.” Fanny still resisted, and from her heart. The gift was too valuable. But Miss Crawford persevered, and argued the case with so much affectionate earnestness through all the heads of William and the cross, and the ball, and herself, as to be finally successful. Fanny found herself obliged to yield, that she might not be accused of pride or indifference, or some other littleness; and having with modest reluctance given her consent, proceeded to make the selection. She looked and looked, longing to know which might be least valuable; and was determined in her choice at last, by fancying there was one necklace more frequently placed before her eyes than the rest. It was of gold, prettily worked; and though Fanny would have preferred a longer and a plainer chain as more adapted for her purpose, she hoped, in fixing on this, to be chusing what Miss Crawford least wished to keep. Miss Crawford smiled her perfect approbation; and hastened to complete the gift by putting the necklace round her, and making her see how well it looked. Fanny had not a word to say against its becomingness, and, excepting what remained of her scruples, was exceedingly pleased with an acquisition so very apropos. She would rather, perhaps, have been obliged to some other person. But this was an unworthy feeling. Miss Crawford had anticipated her wants with a kindness which proved her a real friend. “When I wear this necklace I shall always think of you,” said she, “and feel how very kind you were.” “You must think of somebody else too, when you wear that necklace,” replied Miss Crawford. “You must think of Henry, for it was his choice in the first place. He gave it to me, and with the necklace I make over to you all the duty of remembering the original giver. It is to be a family remembrancer. 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William’s desire of seeing Fanny dance made more than a momentary impression on his uncle. The hope of an opportunity, which Sir Thomas had then given, was not given to be thought of no more. He remained steadily inclined to gratify so amiable a feeling; to gratify anybody else who might wish to see Fanny dance, and to give pleasure to the young people in general; and having thought the matter over, and taken his resolution in quiet independence, the result of it appeared the next morning at breakfast, when, after recalling and commending what his nephew had said, he added, “I do not like, William, that you should leave Northamptonshire without this indulgence. It would give me pleasure to see you both dance. You spoke of the balls at Northampton. Your cousins have occasionally attended them; but they would not altogether suit us now. The fatigue would be too much for your aunt. I believe we must not think of a Northampton ball. A dance at home would be more eligible; and if–” “Ah, my dear Sir Thomas!” interrupted Mrs. Norris, “I knew what was coming. I knew what you were going to say. If dear Julia were at home, or dearest Mrs. Rushworth at Sotherton, to afford a reason, an occasion for such a thing, you would be tempted to give the young people a dance at Mansfield. I know you would. If _they_ were at home to grace the ball, a ball you would have this very Christmas. Thank your uncle, William, thank your uncle!” “My daughters,” replied Sir Thomas, gravely interposing, “have their pleasures at Brighton, and I hope are very happy; but the dance which I think of giving at Mansfield will be for their cousins. Could we be all assembled, our satisfaction would undoubtedly be more complete, but the absence of some is not to debar the others of amusement.” Mrs. Norris had not another word to say. She saw decision in his looks, and her surprise and vexation required some minutes’ silence to be settled into composure. A ball at such a time! His daughters absent and herself not consulted! There was comfort, however, soon at hand. _She_ must be the doer of everything: Lady Bertram would of course be spared all thought and exertion, and it would all fall upon _her_. She should have to do the honours of the evening; and this reflection quickly restored so much of her good-humour as enabled her to join in with the others, before their happiness and thanks were all expressed. Edmund, William, and Fanny did, in their different ways, look and speak as much grateful pleasure in the promised ball as Sir Thomas could desire. Edmund’s feelings were for the other two. His father had never conferred a favour or shewn a kindness more to his satisfaction. Lady Bertram was perfectly quiescent and contented, and had no objections to make. Sir Thomas engaged for its giving her very little trouble; and she assured him “that she was not at all afraid of the trouble; indeed, she could not imagine there would be any.” Mrs. Norris was ready with her suggestions as to the rooms he would think fittest to be used, but found it all prearranged; and when she would have conjectured and hinted about the day, it appeared that the day was settled too. Sir Thomas had been amusing himself with shaping a very complete outline of the business; and as soon as she would listen quietly, could read his list of the families to be invited, from whom he calculated, with all necessary allowance for the shortness of the notice, to collect young people enough to form twelve or fourteen couple: and could detail the considerations which had induced him to fix on the 22nd as the most eligible day. William was required to be at Portsmouth on the 24th; the 22nd would therefore be the last day of his visit; but where the days were so few it would be unwise to fix on any earlier. Mrs. Norris was obliged to be satisfied with thinking just the same, and with having been on the point of proposing the 22nd herself, as by far the best day for the purpose. The ball was now a settled thing, and before the evening a proclaimed thing to all whom it concerned. Invitations were sent with despatch, and many a young lady went to bed that night with her head full of happy cares as well as Fanny. To her the cares were sometimes almost beyond the happiness; for young and inexperienced, with small means of choice and no confidence in her own taste, the “how she should be dressed” was a point of painful solicitude; and the almost solitary ornament in her possession, a very pretty amber cross which William had brought her from Sicily, was the greatest distress of all, for she had nothing but a bit of ribbon to fasten it to; and though she had worn it in that manner once, would it be allowable at such a time in the midst of all the rich ornaments which she supposed all the other young ladies would appear in? And yet not to wear it! William had wanted to buy her a gold chain too, but the purchase had been beyond his means, and therefore not to wear the cross might be mortifying him. These were anxious considerations; enough to sober her spirits even under the prospect of a ball given principally for her gratification. The preparations meanwhile went on, and Lady Bertram continued to sit on her sofa without any inconvenience from them. She had some extra visits from the housekeeper, and her maid was rather hurried in making up a new dress for her: Sir Thomas gave orders, and Mrs. Norris ran about; but all this gave _her_ no trouble, and as she had foreseen, “there was, in fact, no trouble in the business.” Edmund was at this time particularly full of cares: his mind being deeply occupied in the consideration of two important events now at hand, which were to fix his fate in life–ordination and matrimony–events of such a serious character as to make the ball, which would be very quickly followed by one of them, appear of less moment in his eyes than in those of any other person in the house. On the 23rd he was going to a friend near Peterborough, in the same situation as himself, and they were to receive ordination in the course of the Christmas week. Half his destiny would then be determined, but the other half might not be so very smoothly wooed. His duties would be established, but the wife who was to share, and animate, and reward those duties, might yet be unattainable. He knew his own mind, but he was not always perfectly assured of knowing Miss Crawford’s. There were points on which they did not quite agree; there were moments in which she did not seem propitious; and though trusting altogether to her affection, so far as to be resolved–almost resolved– on bringing it to a decision within a very short time, as soon as the variety of business before him were arranged, and he knew what he had to offer her, he had many anxious feelings, many doubting hours as to the result. His conviction of her regard for him was sometimes very strong; he could look back on a long course of encouragement, and she was as perfect in disinterested attachment as in everything else. But at other times doubt and alarm intermingled with his hopes; and when he thought of her acknowledged disinclination for privacy and retirement, her decided preference of a London life, what could he expect but a determined rejection? unless it were an acceptance even more to be deprecated, demanding such sacrifices of situation and employment on his side as conscience must forbid.

West of Roke in a crowd between the two great lands Hosk and Ensmer lie the Ninety Isles. The nearest to Roke is Serd, and the farthest is Seppish, which lies almost in the Pelnish Sea; and whether the sum of them is ninety is a question never settled, for if you count only isles with freshwater springs you might have seventy, while if you count every rock you might have a hundred and still not be done; and then the tide would change. Narrow run the channels between the islets, and there the mild tides of the Inmost Sea, chafed and baffled, run high and fall low, so that where at high tide there might be three islands in one place, at low there might be one. Yet for all that danger of the tide, every child who can walk can paddle, and has his little rowboat; housewives row across the channel to take a cup of rushwash tea with the neighbor; peddlers call their wares in rhythm with the stroke of their oars. All roads there are salt water, blocked only by nets strung from house to house across the straits to catch the small fish called turbies, the oil of which is the wealth of the Ninety Isles. There are few bridges, and no great towns. Every islet is thick with farms and fishermen’s houses, and these are gathered into townships each of ten or twenty islets. One such was Low Torning, the westernmost, looking not on the Inmost Sea but outward to empty ocean, that lonely corner of the Archipelago where only Pendor lies, the dragon-spoiled isle, and beyond it the waters of the West Reach, desolate. A house was ready there for the township’s new wizard. It stood on a hill among green fields of barley, sheltered from the west wind by a grove of pendick-trees that now were red with flowers. From the door one looked out on other thatched roofs and groves and gardens, and other islands with their roofs and fields and hills, and amongst them all the many bright winding channels of the sea. It was a poor house, windowless, with earthen floor, yet a better house than the one Ged was born in. The Isle-Men of Low Torning, standing in awe of the wizard from Roke, asked pardon for its humbleness. “We have no stone to build with,” said one, “We are none of us rich, though none starve,” said another, and a third, “It will be dry at least, for I saw to the thatching myself, Sir.” To Ged it was as good as any palace. He thanked the leaders of the township frankly, so that the eighteen of them went home, each in his own rowboat to his home isle, to tell the fishermen and housewives that the new wizard was a strange young grim fellow who spoke little, but he spoke fairly, and without pride. There was little cause, perhaps, for pride in this first magistry of Ged’s. Wizards trained on Roke went commonly to cities or castles, to serve high lords who held them in high honor. These fisherman of Low Torning in the usual way of things would have had among them no more than a witch or a plain sorcerer, to charm the fishing-nets and sing over new boats and cure beasts and men of their ailments. But in late years the old Dragon of Pendor had spawned: nine dragons, it was said, now laired in the ruined towers of the Sealords of Pendor, dragging their scaled bellies up and down the marble stairs and through the broken doorways there. Wanting food on that dead isle, they would be flying forth some year when they were grown and hunger came upon them. Already a flight of four had been seen over the southwest shores of Hosk, not alighting but spying out the sheepfolds, barns, and villages. The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate. So the Isle-Men of Low Torning had sent to Roke begging for a wizard to protect their folk from what boded over the western horizon, and the Archmage had judged their fear well founded. “There is no comfort in this place,” the Archmage had said to Ged on, the day he made him wizard, “no fame, no wealth, mybe no risk. Will you go?” “I will go,” Ged had replied, not from obedience only. Since the night on Roke Knoll his desire had turned as much against fame and display as once it had been set on them. Always now he doubted his strength and dreaded the trial of his power. Yet also the talk of dragons drew him with a great curiosity. In Gont there have been no dragons for many hundred years; and no dragon would ever fly within scent or sight or spell of Roke, so that there also they are a matter of tales and songs only, things sung of but not seen. Ged had learned all he could of dragons at the School, but it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them. The chance lay bright before him, and heartily he answered, “I will go ” The Archmage Gensher had nodded his head, but his look was somber. “Tell me,” he said at last, “do you fear to leave Roke? or are you eager to be gone?” “Both, my lord.” Again Gensher nodded. “I do not know if I do right to send you from your safety here,” he said very low. “I cannot see your way. It is all in darkness. And there is a power in the North, something that would destroy you, but what it is and where, whether in your past or on your forward way, I cannot tell: it is all shadowed. When the men from Low Torning came here, I thought at once of you, for it seemed a safe place and out of the way, where you might have time to gather your strength. But I do not know if any place is safe for you, or where your way goes. I do not want to send you out into the dark…” It seemed a bright enough place to Ged at first, the house under the flowering trees. 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Now if you wish, like the dwarves, to hear news of Smaug, you must go back again to the evening when he smashed the door and flew off in rage, two days before. The men of the lake-town Esgaroth were mostly indoors, for the breeze was from the black East and chill, but a few were walking on the quays, and watching, as they were fond of doing, the stars shine out from the smooth patches of the lake as they opened in the sky. From their town the Lonely Mountain was mostly screened by the low hills at the far end of the lake, through a gap in which the Running River came down from the North. Only its high peak could they see in clear weather, and they looked seldom at it, for it was ominous and dreary even in the light of morning. Now it was lost and gone, blotted in the dark. Suddenly it flickered back to view; a brief glow touched it and faded. “Look!” said one. “The lights again! Last night the watchmen saw them start and fade from midnight until dawn. Something is happening up there.” “Perhaps the King under the Mountain is forging gold,” said another. “It is long since he went north. It is time the songs began to prove themselves again.” “Which king?” said another with a grim voice. “As like as not it is the marauding fire of the Dragon, the only king under the Mountain we have ever known.” “You are always foreboding gloomy things!” said the others. “Anything from floods to poisoned fish. Think of something cheerful!” Then suddenly a great light appeared in the low place in the hills and the northern end of the lake turned golden. “The King beneath the Mountain!” they shouted. “His wealth is like the Sun, his silver like a fountain, his rivers golden run! The river is running gold from the Mountain!” they cried, and everywhere windows were opening and feet were hurrying. There was once more a tremendous excitement and enthusiasm. But the grim-voiced fellow ran hotfoot to the Master. “The dragon is coming or I am a fool!” he cried. “Cut the bridges! To arms! To arms!” Then warning trumpets were suddenly sounded, and echoed along the rocky shores. The cheering stopped and the joy was turned to dread. So it was that the dragon did not find them quite unprepared. Before long, so great was his speed, they could see him as a spark of fire rushing towards them and growing ever huger and more bright, and not the most foolish doubted that the prophecies had gone rather wrong. Still they had a little time. Every vessel in the town was filled with water, every warrior was armed, every arrow and dart was ready, and the bridge to the land was thrown down and destroyed, before the roar of Smaug’s terrible approach grew loud, and the lake rippled red as fire beneath the awful beating of his wings. Amid shrieks and wailing and the shouts of men he came over them, swept towards the bridges and was foiled! The bridge was gone, and his enemies were on an island in deep water-too deep and dark and cool for his liking. If he plunged into it, a vapour and a steam would arise enough to cover all the land with a mist for days; but the lake was mightier than he, it would quench him before he could pass through. Roaring he swept back over the town. A hail of dark arrows leaped up and snapped and rattled on his scales and jewels, and their shafts fell back kindled by his breath burning and hissing into the lake. No fireworks you ever imagined equalled the sights that night. At the twanging of the bows and the shrilling of the trumpets the dragon’s wrath blazed to its height, till he was blind and mad with it. No one had dared to give battle to him for many an age; nor would they have dared now, if it had not been for the grim-voiced man (Bard was his name), who ran to and fro cheering on the archers and urging the Master to order them to fight to the last arrow. Fire leaped from the dragon’s jaws. He circled for a while high in the air above them lighting all the lake; the trees by the shores shone like copper and like blood with leaping shadows of dense black at their feet. Then down he swooped straight through the arrow-storm, reckless in his rage, taking no heed to turn his scaly sides towards his foes, seeking only to set their town ablaze. Fire leaped from thatched roofs and wooden beam-ends as he hurtled down and past and round again, though all had been drenched with water before he came. Once more water was flung by a hundred hands wherever a spark appeared. Back swirled the dragon. A sweep of his tail and the roof of the Great House crumbled and smashed down. Flames unquenchable sprang high into the night. Another swoop and another, and another house and then another sprang afire and fell; and still no arrow hindered Smaug or hurt him more than a fly from the marshes. Already men were jumping into the water on every side. Women and children were being huddled into laden boats in the market-pool. Weapons were flung down. There was mourning and weeping, where but a little time ago the old songs of mirth to come had been sung about the dwarves. Now men cursed their names. The Master himself was turning to his great gilded boat, hoping to row away in the confusion and save himself. Soon all the town would be deserted and burned down to the surface of the lake. That was the dragon’s hope. They could all get into boats for all he cared. There he could have fine sport hunting them, or they could stop till they starved. Let them try to get to land and he would be ready. Soon he would set all the shoreland woods ablaze and wither every field and pasture. Just now he was enjoying the sport of town-baiting more than he had enjoyed anything for years. But there was still a company of archers that held their ground among the burning houses. Their captain was Bard, grim-voiced and grim-faced, whose friends had accused him of prophesying floods and poisoned fish, though they knew his worth and courage. He was a descendant in long line of Girion, Lord of Dale, whose wife and child had escaped down the Running River from the ruin long ago. Now he shot with a great yew bow, till all his arrows but one were spent. The flames were near him. His companions were leaving him. He bent his bow for the last time. Suddenly out of the dark something fluttered to his shoulder. He started-but it was only an old thrush. Unafraid it perched by his ear and it brought him news. Marvelling he found he could understand its tongue, for he was of the race of Dale. “Wait! Wait!” it said to him. “The moon is rising. Look for the hollow of the left breast as he flies and turns above you!” And while Bard paused in wonder it told him of tidings up in the Mountain and of all that it had heard. Then Bard drew his bow-string to his ear. The dragon was circling back, flying low, and as he came the moon rose above the eastern shore and silvered his great wings. “Arrow!” said the bowman. “Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!” The dragon swooped once more lower than ever, and as he turned and dived down his belly glittered white with sparkling fires of gems in the moon-but not in one place. The great bow twanged. The black arrow sped straight from the string, straight for the hollow by the left breast where the foreleg was flung wide. In it smote and vanished, barb, shaft and feather, so fierce was its flight. With a shriek that deafened men, felled trees and split stone, Smaug shot spouting into the air, turned over and crashed down from on high in ruin. Full on the town he fell. His last throes splintered it to sparks and gledes. The lake roared in. A vast steam leaped up, white in the sudden dark under the moon. There was a hiss, a gushing whirl, and then silence. And that was the end of Smaug and Esgaroth, but not of Bard. The waxing moon rose higher and higher and the wind grew loud and cold. It twisted the white fog into bending pillars and hurrying clouds and drove it off to the West to scatter in tattered shreds over the marshes before Mirkwood. Then the many boats could be seen dotted dark on the surface of the lake, and down the wind came the voices of the people of Esgaroth lamenting their lost town and goods and ruined houses. But they had really much to be thankful for, had they thought of it, though it could hardly be expected that they should just then: three quarters of the people of the town had at least escaped alive; their woods and fields and pastures and cattle and most of their boats remained undamaged; and the dragon was dead. What that meant they had not yet realized. They gathered in mournful crowds upon the western shores, shivering in the cold wind, and their first complaints and anger were against the Master, who had left the town so soon, while some were still willing to defend it. “He may have a good head for business-especially his own business,” some murmured, “but he is no good when anything serious happens!” And they praised the courage of Bard and his last mighty shot. “If only he had not been killed,” they all said, “we would make him a king. Bard the Dragon-shooter of the line of Girion! Alas that he is lost!” And in the very midst of their talk, a tall figure stepped from the shadows. He was drenched with water, his black hair hung wet over his face and shoulders, and a fierce light was in his eyes. “Bard is not lost!” he cried. “He dived from Esgaroth, when the enemy was slain. I am Bard, of the line of Girion; I am the slayer of the dragon!” “King Bard! King Bard!” they shouted; but the Master ground his chattering teeth. “Girion was lord of Dale, not king of Esgaroth,” he said. “In the Lake-town we have always elected masters from among the old and wise, and have not endured the rule of mere fighting men. Let ‘King Bard’ go back to his own kingdom-Dale is now freed by his valour, and nothing binders his return. And any that wish can go with him, if they prefer the cold shores under the shadow of the Mountain to the green shores of the lake. The wise will stay here and hope to rebuild our town, and enjoy again in time its peace and riches.” “We will have King Bard!” the people near at hand shouted in reply. “We have had enough of the old men and the money-counters!” And people further off took up the cry: “Up the Bowman, and down with Moneybags,” till the clamour echoed along the shore. “I am the last man to undervalue Bard the Bowman,” said the Master warily (for Bard now stood close beside him). “He has tonight earned an eminent place in the roll of the benefactors of our town; and he is worthy of many imperishable songs. But, why O People?”-and here the Master rose to his feet and spoke very loud and clear - “why do I get all your blame? For what fault am I to be deposed? Who aroused the dragon from his slumber, I might ask? Who obtained of us rich gifts and ample help, and led us to believe that old songs could come true? Who played on our soft hearts and our pleasant fancies? What sort of gold have they sent down the river to reward us? Dragon-fire and ruin! From whom should we claim the recompense of our damage, and aid for our widows and orphans?”

I don’t know if it has occurred to you that, even if you could steal the gold bit by bit-a matter of a hundred years or so - you could not get it very far? Not much use on the mountain-side? Not much use in the forest? Bless me! Had you never thought of the catch? A fourteenth share, I suppose, Or something like it, those were the terms, eh? But what about delivery? What about cartage? What about armed guards and tolls?” And Smaug laughed aloud. He had a wicked and a wily heart, and he knew his guesses were not far out, though he suspected that the Lake-men were at the back of the plans, and that most of the plunder was meant to stop there in the town by the shore that in his young days had been called Esgaroth. You will hardly believe it, but poor Bilbo was really very taken aback. So far all his. thoughts and energies had been concentrated on getting to the Mountain and finding the entrance. He had never bothered to wonder how the treasure was to be removed, certainly never how any part of it that might fall to his share was to be brought back all the way to Bag-End Under-Hill. Now a nasty suspicion began to grow in his mind-had the dwarves forgotten this important point too, or were they laughing in their sleeves at him all the time? That is the effect that dragon-talk has on the inexperienced. Bilbo of course ought to have been on his guard; but Smaug had rather an overwhelming personality. “I tell you,” he said, in an effort to remain loyal to his friends and to keep his end up, “that gold was only an afterthought with us. We came over hill and under hill, by wave and win, for “Revenge”. Surely, O Smaug the unassessably wealthy, you must realize that your success has made you some bitter enemies?” Then Smaug really did laugh-a devastating sound which shook Bilbo to the floor, while far up in the tunnel the dwarves huddled together and imagined that the hobbit had come to a sudden and a nasty end. “Revenge!” he snorted, and the light of his eyes lit the the hall from floor to ceiling like scarlet lightning. “Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are hi kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons’ sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong strong. Thief in the Shadows!” he gloated. “My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!” “I have always understood,” said Bilbo in a frightened squeak, “that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the-er-chest; but doubtless one so fortified has thought of that.” The dragon stopped short in his boasting. “Your information is antiquated,” he snapped. “I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems. No blade can pierce me.” “I might have guessed it,” said Bilbo. “Truly there can; nowhere be found the equal of Lord Smaug the Impenetrable. What magnificence to possess a waistcoat of fine diamonds!” “Yes, it is rare and wonderful, indeed,” said Smaug absurdly pleased. He did not know that the hobbit had already caught a glimpse of his peculiar under-covering on his previous visit, and was itching for a closer view for reasons of his own. The dragon rolled over. “Look!” he said. “What do you say to that?” “Dazzlingly marvellous! Perfect! Flawless! Staggering!” exclaimed Bilbo aloud, but what he thought inside was: “Old fool! Why there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!” After he had seen that Mr. Baggins’ one idea was to get away. “Well, I really must not detain Your Magnificence any longer,” he said, “or keep you from much needed rest. Ponies take some catching, I believe, after a long start. And so do burglars,” he added as a parting shot, as he darted back and fled up the tunnel. It was an unfortunate remark, for the dragon spouted terrific flames after him, and fast though he sped up the slope, he had not gone nearly far enough to be comfortable before the ghastly head of Smaug was thrust against the opening behind. Luckily the whole head and jaws could not squeeze in, but the nostrils sent forth fire and vapour to pursue him, and he was nearly overcome, and stumbled blindly on in great pain and fear. He had been feeling rather pleased with the cleverness of his conversation with Smaug, but his mistake at the end shook him into better sense. “Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. “You aren’t nearly through this adventure yet,” he added, and that was pretty true as well. The afternoon was turning into evening when he came out again and stumbled and fell in a faint on the ‘door-step.’ The dwarves revived him, and doctored his scorches as well as they could; but it was a long time before the hair on the back of his head and his heels grew properly again: it had all been singed and frizzled right down to the skin. In the meanwhile his friends did their best to cheer him up; and they were eager for his story, especially wanting to know why the dragon had made such an awful noise, and how Bilbo had escaped. But the hobbit was worried and uncomfortable, and they had difficulty in getting anything out of him. On thinking things over he was now regretting some of the things he had said to the dragon, and was not eager to repeat them. The old thrush was sitting on a rock near by with his head cocked on one side, listening to all that was said. It shows what an ill temper Bilbo was in: he picked up a stone and threw it at the thrush, which merely fluttered aside and came back. “Drat the bird!” said Bilbo crossly. “I believe he is listening, and I don’t like the look of him.” “Leave him alone!” said Thorin. “The thrushes are good and friendly-this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere.” “Well, he’ll have news to take to Lake-town all right, if that is what he is after,” said Bilbo; “though I don’t suppose there are any people left there that trouble with thrush-language.” “Why what has happened?” cried the dwarves. “Do get on with your tale!” So Bilbo told them all he could remember, and he confessed that he had a nasty feeling that the dragon guessed too much from his riddles added to the camps and the ponies. “I am sure he knows we came from Lake-town and had help from there; and I have a horrible feeling that his next move may be in that direction. I wish to goodness I had never said that about Barrel-rider; it would make even a blind rabbit in these parts think of the Lake-men.” “Well, well! It cannot be helped, and it is difficult not to slip in talking to a dragon, or so I have always heard,” said Balin anxious to comfort him. “I think you did very well, if you ask me-you found out one very useful thing at any rate, and got home alive, and that is more than most can say who have had words with the likes of Smaug. It may be a mercy and a blessing yet to know of the bare patch in the old Worm’s diamond waistcoat.” That turned the conversation, and they all began discussing dragon-slayings historical, dubious, and mythical, and the various sorts of stabs and jabs and undercuts, and the different arts, devices and stratagems by which they had been accomplished. 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Then Bilbo fled. But the dragon did not wake-not yet but shifted into other dreams of greed and violence, lying there in his stolen hall while the little hobbit toiled back up the long tunnel. His heart was beating and a more fevered shaking was in his legs than when he was going down, but still he clutched the cup, and his chief thought was: “I’ve done it! This will show them. ‘More like a grocer than a burglar’ indeed! Well, we’ll hear no more of that.” Nor did he. Balin was overjoyed to see the hobbit again, and as delighted as he was surprised. He picked Bilbo up and carried him out into the open air. It was midnight and clouds had covered the stars, but Bilbo lay with his eyes shut, gasping and taking pleasure in the feel of the fresh air again, and hardly noticing the excitement of the dwarves, or how they praised him and patted him on the back and put themselves and all their families for generations to come at his service. The dwarves were still passing the cup from hand to hand and talking delightedly of the recovery of their treasure, when suddenly a vast rumbling woke in the mountain underneath as if it was an old volcano that had made up its mind to start eruptions once again. The door behind them was pulled nearly to, and blocked from closing with a stone, but up the long tunnel came the dreadful echoes, from far down in the depths, of a bellowing and a trampling that made the ground beneath them tremble. Then the dwarves forgot their joy and their confident boasts of a moment before and cowered down in fright. Smaug was still to be reckoned with. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession; and Smaug was no exception. He had passed from an uneasy dream (in which a warrior, altogether insignificant in size but provided with a bitter sword and great courage, figured most unpleasantly) to a doze, and from a doze to wide waking. There was a breath of strange air in his cave. Could there be a draught from that little hole? He had never felt quite happy about it, though was so small, and now he glared at it in suspicion an wondered why he had never blocked it up. Of late he had half fancied he had caught the dim echoes of a knocking sound from far above that came down through it to his lair. He stirred and stretched forth his neck to sniff. Then he missed the cup! Thieves! Fire! Murder! Such a thing had not happened since first he came to the Mountain! His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted. His fire belched forth, the hall smoked, he shook the mountain-roots. He thrust his head in vain at the little hole, and then coiling his length together, roaring like thunder underground, he sped from his deep lair through its great door, out into the huge passages of the mountain-palace and up towards the Front Gate. To hunt the whole mountain till he had caught the thief and had torn and trampled him was his one thought. He issued from the Gate, the waters rose in fierce whistling steam, and up he soared blazing into the air and settled on the mountain-top in a spout of green and scarlet flame. The dwarves heard the awful rumour of his flight, and they crouched against the walls of the grassy terrace cringing under boulders, hoping somehow to escape the frightful eyes of the hunting dragon. There they would have all been killed, if it had not been for Bilbo once again. “Quick! Quick!” he gasped. “The door! The tunnel! It’s no good here.” Roused by these words they were just about to creep inside the tunnel when Bifur gave a cry: “My cousins! Bombur and Bofur - we have forgotten them, they are down in the valley!” “They will be slain, and all our ponies too, and all out stores lost,” moaned the others. “We can do nothing.” “Nonsense!” said Thorin, recovering his dignity. “We cannot leave them. Get inside Mr. Baggins and Balin, and you two Fili and Kili-the dragon shan’t have all of us. Now you others, where are the ropes? Be quick!” Those were perhaps the worst moments they had been through yet. The horrible sounds of Smaug’s anger were echoing in the stony hollows far above; at any moment he might come blazing down or fly whirling round and find them there, near the perilous cliff’s edge hauling madly on the ropes. Up came Bofur, and still all was safe. Up came Bombur, puffing and blowing while the ropes creaked, and still all was safe. Up came some tools and bundles of stores, and then danger was upon them. A whirring noise was heard. A red light touched the points of standing rocks. The dragon came. They had barely time to fly back to the tunnel, pulling and dragging in their bundles, when Smaug came hurtling from the North, licking the mountain-sides with flame, beating his great wings with a noise like a roaring wind. His hot breath shrivelled the grass before the door, and drove in through the crack they had left and scorched them as they lay hid. Flickering fires leaped up and black rock-shadows danced. Then darkness fell as he passed again. The ponies screamed with terror, burst their ropes and galloped wildly off. The dragon swooped and turned to pursue them, and was gone. “That’ll be the end of our poor beasts!” said Thorin. “Nothing can escape Smaug once he sees it. Here we are and here we shall have to stay, unless any one fancies tramping the long open miles back to the river with Smaug on the watch!” It was not a pleasant thought! They crept further down the tunnel, and there they lay and shivered though it was warm and stuffy, until dawn came pale through the crack of the door. Every now and again through the night they could hear the roar of the flying dragon grow and then pass and fade, as he hunted round and round the mountain-sides. He guessed from the ponies, and from the traces of the camps he had discovered, that men had come up from the river and the lake and had scaled the mountain-side from the valley where the ponies had been standing; but the door withstood his searching eye, and the little high-walled bay had kept out his fiercest flames. Long he had hunted in vain till the dawn chilled his wrath and he went back to his golden couch to sleep - and to gather new strength. He would not forget or forgive the theft, not if a thousand years turned him to smouldering stone, but he could afford to wait. Slow and silent he crept back to his lair and half closed his eyes. When morning came the terror of the dwarves grew less. They realized that dangers of this kind were inevitable in dealing with such a guardian, and that it was no good giving up their quest yet. Nor could they get away just now, as Thorin had pointed out. Their ponies were lost or killed, and they would have to wait some time before Smaug relaxed his watch sufficiently for them to dare the long way on foot. Luckily they had saved enough of their stores to last them still for some time. They debated long on what was to be done, but they could think of no way of getting rid of Smaug - which had always been a weak point in their plans, as Bilbo felt inclined to point out. Then as is the nature of folk that are thoroughly perplexed, they began to grumble at the hobbit, blaming him for what had at first so pleased them: for bringing away a cup and stirring up Smaug’s wrath so soon. “What else do you suppose a burglar is to do?” asked Bilbo angrily. “I was not engaged to kill dragons, that is warrior’s work, but to steal treasure. I made the best beginning I could. Did you expect me to trot back with the whole hoard of Thror on my back? If there is any grumbling to be done, I think I might have a say. You ought to have brought five hundred burglars not one. I am sure it reflects great credit on your grandfather, but you cannot pretend that you ever made the vast extent of his wealth clear to me. I should want hundreds of years to bring it all up, if I was fifty times as big, and Smaug as tame as a rabbit.” After that of course the dwarves begged his pardon. “What then do you propose we should do, Mr. Baggins?” asked Thorin politely. “I have no idea at the moment - if you mean about removing the treasure. That obviously depends entirely on some new turn of luck and the getting rid of Smaug. Getting rid of dragons is not at all in my line, but I will do my best to think about it. Personally I have no hopes at all, and wish I was safe back at home.” “Never mind that for the moment! What are we to do now, to-day?” “Well, if you really want my advice, I should say we can do nothing but stay where we are. By day we can no doubt creep out safely enough to take the air. Perhaps before long one or two could be chosen to go back to the store by the river and replenish our supplies. But in the meanwhile everyone ought to be well inside the tunnel by night. “Now I will make you an offer. I have got my ring and will creep down this very noon-then if ever Smaug ought to be napping-and see what he is up to. Perhaps something will turn up. ‘Every worm has his weak spot,’ as my father used to say, though I am sure it was not from personal experience.” Naturally the dwarves accepted the offer eagerly. Already they had come to respect little Bilbo. Now he had become the real leader in their adventure. He had begun to have ideas and plans of his own. When midday came he got ready for another journey down into the Mountain. He did not like it of course, but it was not so bad now he knew, more or less, what was in front of him. Had he known more about dragons and their wily ways, he might have teen more frightened and less hopeful of catching this one napping. The sun was shining when he started, but it was as dark as night in the tunnel. The light from the door, almost closed, soon faded as he went down. So silent was his going that smoke on a gentle wind could hardly have surpasses it, and he was inclined to feel a bit proud of himself as he drew near the lower door. There was only the very fainter glow to be seen. “Old Smaug is weary and asleep,” he thought. “He can’t, see me and he won’t hear me. Cheer up Bilbo!” He had forgotten or had never heard about dragons’ sense of smell. It is also an awkward fact that they keep half an eye open watching while they sleep, if they are suspicious. Smaug certainly looked fast asleep, almost dead and dark, with scarcely a snore more than a whiff of unseen steam, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out on to the floor when he caught a sudden thin and piercing ray of red from under the drooping lid. of Smaug’s left eye. He was only pretending to sleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance! Hurriedly Bilbo stepped back and blessed the luck of his ring. Then Smaug spoke. “Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!” But Bilbo was not quite so unlearned in dragon-lore as all that, and if Smaug hoped to get him to come nearer so easily he was disappointed. “No thank you, O Smaug the. Tremendous!” he replied. “I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say. I did not believe them.” “Do you now?” said the dragon somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it. j “Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities,” replied Bilbo. You have nice manners for a thief and a liar,” said the dragon. “You seem familiar with my name, but I don’t seem to remember smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?” “You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air, I am he that walks unseen.” “So I can well believe,” said Smaug, “but that is hardly our usual name.” “I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I as chosen for the lucky number.” “Lovely titles!” sneered the dragon. “But lucky numbers don’t always come off.” “I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me.” “These don’t sound so creditable,” scoffed Smaug. “I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider,” went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling. “That’s better!” said Smaug. “But don’t let your imagination run away with you!” This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don’t want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don’t want to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise). No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it. There was a lot here which Smaug did not understand at all (though I expect you do, since you know all about Bilbo’s adventures to which he was referring), but he thought he understood enough, and he chuckled in his wicked inside. “I thought so last night,” he smiled to himself. “Lake-men, some nasty scheme of those miserable tub-trading Lake-men, or I’m a lizard. I haven’t been down that way for an age and an age; but I will soon alter that!” “Very well, O Barrel-rider!” he said aloud. “Maybe Barrel was your pony’s name; and maybe not, though it was fat enough. You may walk unseen, but you did not walk all the way. Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat all the others before long. In return for the excellent meal I will give you one piece of advice for your good: don’t have more to do with dwarves than you can help!” “Dwarves!” said Bilbo in pretended surprise. “Don’t talk to me!” said Smaug. “I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf-no one better. Don’t tell me that I can eat a dwarf-ridden pony and not know it! You’ll come to a bad end, if you go with such friends. Thief Barrel-rider. I don’t mind if you go back and tell them so from me.” But he did not tell Bilbo that there was one smell he could not make out at all, hobbit-smell; it was quite outside his experience and puzzled him mightily. “I suppose you got a fair price for that cup last night?” he went on. “Come now, did you? Nothing at all! Well, that’s just like them. And I suppose they are skulking outside, and your job is to do all the dangerous work and get what you can when I’m not looking-for them? And you will get a fair share? Don’t you believe it! If you get off alive, you will be lucky.” Bilbo was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable. Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell. But plucking up courage he spoke again. “You don’t know everything, O Smaug the Mighty,” said he. “Not gold alone brought us hither.” “Ha! Ha! You admit the ‘us’,” laughed Smaug. “Why not say ‘us fourteen’ and be done with it. Mr. Lucky Number? I am pleased to hear that you had other business in these parts besides my gold. In that case you may, perhaps, not altogether waste your time.