hey concealed more of the big rooms.

None of them had any lights behind them. Only the one door that he had
come through showed the telltale glow from the other side. Why?

He had the terrible feeling that he had been drawn across time to this
place for a purpose, and yet he could think of no rational reason for
believing so.

He stopped as another memory came back. He remembered being in the
stone-walled dungeon, with its smelly straw beds, lit only by the faint
shaft of sunlight that came from the barred window high overhead.

Contarini, the short, wiry little Italian who was in the next cell,
looked at him through the narrow opening. "I still think it can be done,
my friend. It is the mind and the mind alone that sees the flow of time.
The body experiences, but does not see. Only the soul is capable of
knowing eternity."

Broom outranked the little Italian, but prison can make brothers of all
men. "You think it's possible then, to get out of a place like this,
simply by thinking about it?"

Contarini nodded. "Why not? Did not the saints do so? And what was that?
Contemplation of the Eternal, my comrade; contemplation of the Eternal."

Broom held back a grin. "Then why, my Venetian friend, have you not left
this place long since?"

"I try," Contarini had said simply, "but I cannot do it. You wish to
know why? It is because I am afraid."

"Afraid?" Broom raised an eyebrow. He had seen Contarini on the
battlefield, dealing death in hand-to-hand combat, and the Italian
hadn't impressed him as a coward.

"Yes," said the Venetian. "Afraid. Oh, I am not afraid of men. I fight.
Some day, I may die--_will_ die. This does not frighten me, death. I am
not afraid of what men may do to me." He stopped and frowned. "But, of
this, I have a great fear. Only a saint can handle such things, and I am
no saint."

"I hope, my dear Contarini," Broom said dryly, "that you are not under
the impression that _I_ am a saint."

"No, perhaps not," Contarini said. "Perhaps not. But you are braver than
I. I am not afraid of any man living. But you are afraid of neither the
living nor the dead, nor of man nor devil--which is a great deal more
than I can say for myself. Besides, there is the blood of kings in your
veins. And has not a king protection that even a man of noble blood such
as myself does not have? I think so.

"Oh, I have no doubt that you could do it, if you but would. And then,
perhaps, when you are free, you would fr