It was decided, to be brief, that Dy-lee should accompany me back through the Fearful Forest to the glens, and there we two would confront the guardians and fling their lifetime of lies into their teeth. I gathered also that he would protect me on the journey from wild beasts, though how without weapons he could do this, I did not see. At any rate, he bade farewell to Zheena and I shook hands all round and we started out across the ruins, with Dy-lee's two poorts, the tame dogwolves, running before us with their scarlet tongues lolling out and their noses in the air. As we went toward the Fearful Forest, I struck up a song; and to its rhythm we marched bravely and in high genial comradeship. * * * * * The oppressive woodland closing in upon us, at about the first hour after the zenith of the sun, my song died away on my lips; and we began to converse together, partly in signs and partly in words. Besides those our languages shared, we had learned a number of one another's common words, and now questions and answers were more readily understood. I asked him if the guardians had ever seen the pictures which he had shown me. He said that he was not sure, but that he believed not, at any rate not in his lifetime. They never seemed interested in anything except being fed and catered to, and did not spend their nights in the caves as I had done, nor had they ever sung to the hairy folk. I gathered that Dy-lee had shown me the pictures out of gratitude for the delight he had taken in my songs. It was the first time I had ever gotten anything for my voice except a kick in the rump. I was exceedingly pleased. Then he put to me a number of questions about my people, and as well as I could I answered them. We discovered another mutual word, which was "thorn," when I pried one from his foot with my knife. Then I thought of weapons, and showing him my metal blade, I asked if he had not seen such things before. He examined it--I think he had wanted to for hours, but was too polite to ask for it--and said that such a knife was unheard of. I had already noticed the flint daggers his people used, which were flaked to make a cutting edge of a sort, but were really sharp only at the tip. My bow and arrows and my hatchet he had seen in his ancient pictures, but mine were the first he had ever handled. His hands were clumsy on them, and I should have hated to let him loose a shaft anywhere in my vicinity. By signs and a few phrases I told him how we heat and mold the metal for our few needs, and he was intrigued but a little skeptical. Did he never hear of heating metal to make anything? No, he said, never. * * * * *