who
very nearly collapsed with embarrassment. Travis wondered about this
'brother' bit. Brother in crime? The Langkit did not clarify. But the
girl turned back on him a smile as glowing as a tiny nova. He gazed
cheerfully back.

"Tude and the others sit now composing your note. A matter of weight,
confounded in darkness." She lowered her eyes becomingly. "Few of us,"
she apologized, "have facility in letters."

"A ransom note," Travis growled. "Great Gods and Little--Tude? Who is
Tude?"

"The large man who, admittedly hastening before the horse, did plant
pain in your head."

"Ah," Travis said, smiling grimly. "We shall presently plow his
field--"

"Ho!" the girl cried, agitated. "Speak not in darkness. Tude extends
both north and south, a man of dimension as well as choler. He boasts
Fors in the tenth in good aspect to Bonken, giving prowess at combat,
and Lyndal in the fourth bespeaks a fair ending. Avoid, odd man,
foreordained disaster."

In his urge to say a great many things Travis stammered. The girl laid
a cool grimy hand lightly on his arm and tried to soothe him.

"With passivity and endurance. The night shall see you free. Tude
comes in close moment with the note. Quarrel not at the price, sign,
and there will be a conclusion to the matter. We are not retrograde
here. As we set our tongues, so lie our deeds."

"Yes, well, all right," Travis grumbled. "But there will come--all
right all right. My name shall be inscribed, let your note contain
what it will. But I would have speed. There are matters of gravity
lying heavily ahead."

The girl cocked her head oddly to one side.

"You sit on points. A rare thing. Lies your horoscope in such
confusion that you know not the drift of the coming hours?"

Travis blinked.

"Horoscope?" he said.

"Surely," the girl said, "the astrologers of your planet did preach
warning to you of the danger of this day, and whether, in the motions
of your system, lay success or failure. Or is it a question of varying
interpretations? Did one say you good while the other--"

Travis grinned broadly. Then he sobered. It would quite logically
follow that these people, primitive as they were, might not be able to
conceive of a land where astrology was not Lord over all. A human
trait. But he saw dangerous ground ahead. He began very cautiously and
diplomatically to explain himself, saying that while astrology was
practiced among his own people, it had not yet become as exa