stupefaction. "I
tell you I know this is the man we've waited for, us and our fathers and
their father's fathers before them! Rebels of Dolfya, I show
you--_Revel, the Mink!_"

The shouts that had come before were murmurs to the chorus of stentorian
bellows which assaulted Revel's ears now. The woman turned and said
something to him, her fine face disdainful, but the words were lost in
the tumult. A dozen men surged down and lifted him to their shoulders
and paraded him round, while hands reached up to touch him and wave
greeting to him.

It was the beginning of a celebration he had never seen the like of, a
festival occasion that included a great dinner of boar and deer meat and
stolen gentry's wine, over which much vague planning was done; and it
ended only when the last rebel had left to sneak homeward, and he and
the girl were left alone with Jerran.

"Sleep now, lad," Jerran said, grinning. "You're exhausted. It isn't
every day a man finds himself a savior."

"But the Mink--I, the Mink?" He still had not entirely accepted it.

"I think so ... and if I care to call you the Mink, no one can
contradict me."

"All the while I was doing those things this morning," muttered Revel,
"I had the feeling I'd done them before. I must have been remembering
the old ballad, for by Orbs, the acts do fit!"

"That minor blasphemy begins to annoy me," said Jerran seriously. "It's
like saying 'by the man I killed yesterday.' We've got to revise our
swearing habits."

"Why not substitute _Revel_ or _Mink_ for _Orb_?" asked the girl
harshly. "Our Revel who dwells in the buttoned sky," she added, with a
malevolent sneer.

"Ah, go to sleep, both of you," said Jerran. "Tomorrow we start to
plan--really plan--to overthrow the gentry."

"And the priests," said Revel fiercely, "and the gods!" He almost
believed that somehow they could climb into the air and destroy the gods
in their red and blue buttons. He lay down, one hand vised on the
woman's wrist, and though he felt he should never sleep that night,
being far too excited, in three minutes he was snoring mightily.

* * * * *

He woke some time later with the prickling feeling of danger on his
skin. He opened his eyes and saw red, literally a red mist that obscured
the world. Then his head began to open and shut, open and shut, and he
knew he had been hit a hell of a blow on the forehead, and there was
blood in his eyes.

Groping for his p