t
is well known that I left my work at the loom, and that I am to die. The
gods have said I am to die, and what they say always happens. Any one of
them who saw me in the town would point at me with his death-rod and I
should fall. Still, no one has ever escaped, and as I must die anyhow, I
will take you to the town if this gives you pleasure."

I could not of course hear of this. My first step to secure her safety
could not reasonably be a step which would ensure her death. I asked
her, however, how these overseeing gods--the police of the town, as I
figured it--would recognise her.

"By the pictures," she said. "They have pictures of every one of us. My
picture is put up throughout the town on the walls of houses."

"I see," I said. "If I go to the town at all I will go alone. Shall I be
in any danger from your people?"

"None. You wear the grey garments. True, you do not walk like a god, and
you suffer from short arms, as I do. But would you be safe from the gods
themselves?"

"Yes," I said. "I have something that was given to me to show them. It
is a sign that they are not to injure me."

"Injure?" she echoed. "The gods injure nobody. They kill when it is
necessary, but they do not injure. If one has a crooked spine, or if one
falls sick, or if one has lived too long, or if one refuses obedience,
as I have done, then of course they must die. It is the law. The gods
themselves have told us that in the old days our forefathers were beaten
or shut up in prisons or their goods were taken away from them. This was
called punishment. We are free from all that. We have food and shelter,
we have light and warmth, we have times of work and times of play. No
one punishes us. That is why it is our duty to love the gods."

"Who taught you to say that?"

"They taught it me themselves. It is one of the first things that a
child learns. But I grow weary of sitting here and telling you the
things that everybody knows. Will you come with me through the forest
and down to the shore where the caves are where I sleep?"

I assented. She rose up and draped her garment anew about her. As we
walked side by side I asked her if she was not afraid of sleeping in the
caves. Surely there first of all the gods would go to look for her.

"No," she said. "Never. No god has ever been inside those caves since
the creature came out of the sea and lived there."

"What creature?"

"How should I know? It was more than fifty years ago, and n