a madman. "You're not supposed to be told till
you're twenty, and you don't do it yourself till you reach
twenty-eight."

"_Do it myself._"

"Certainly." He gave a humorless snort of laughter. "D'you think we
don't pay for the privilege of being gentry, you fool? Now leave me
alone!" He lifted her and flung her at the door. The golden sphere
hovered motionless in the air. "Never speak of what you saw, and never
ask another question of me till your twentieth birthday ... if you live
to reach it!"

She fumbled the door open and staggered into the hall, and wept there
with awful tearing sobs, while her sister Jann looked at her and giggled
hysterically.

CHAPTER VIII

The Mink he seeks the gentrylass;
He eyes the gods above;
He laughs their might to scorn, the while
He hunts his highborn love.

A fearsome lion bars the way,
The Mink he cannot pass;
He lifts his pick with fearful rage,
And blood besmears the grass!

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

Revel was plowing through the brush like a wound-crazed bear. Jerran
came behind, shouting directions, for Revel's impatience would not be
stilled enough for him to follow anyone, especially the small Jerran,
whose head rang, he said, from the skull-cracking blow he'd been given
by Rack, and who was slowed as a consequence.

Revel got farther and farther in advance, tearing with his pick at vines
and creepers, trampling small trees, making enough noise for seven men.
Dimly he remembered much of the trail hereabouts, and at last he was so
far ahead of Jerran that he couldn't hear him.

He came into a tiny glade, ceilinged with branches of the oaks. Across
its width, some twenty feet from him, a huge woods lion lay above the
torn corpse of a man. One of the rebels from the meeting, thought Revel,
who wasn't so lucky as most. The lion looked up and growled.

Its mane was long and bur-tangled, black as sin; its body seven hundred
pounds of muscle and bone, was longer than Revel was tall. He greeted it
joyously, a foe to grapple with at last!

It came to its feet, challenge on challenge rumbling in its massive
chest. He drew a gun, then stuck it back. His hands ached for work, more
work than the pulling of a trigger. He ported his pickax. "Come along,
old monster," he said. "We'll see how a mink and a lion can mix it!"

It stalked two steps, gathered itself for a leap; he didn't wait, but
sprang forward to meet it. T