"Light and long life, O Sarki," Stoltzfoos said, standing up. "Will the guest who honors my roof-cup taste coffee with his fortunate host?" the Sarki asked. "The lucky guest will be ever the Sarki's servant if your Honor allows him to share his pleasure with his fellow-farmer and employee, Waziri the son of Musa," Aaron said. "You'd better have hired mice to guard your stored grain, O Haruna; and blowflies to curry your cattle, than to have engaged the son of Musa as a farmer," Kazunzumi growled. "Waziri has little light of understanding. He will try to win from the soil what only honest sweat and Mother's grace can cause to grow. This boy will gray your beard, Haruna." "Perhaps the sun that warms the soil will light his brains to understanding," Aaron suggested. "Better that your hand should leave the plowhandle from time to time to warm his lazy fundament," the Sarki said. "Just so, O Sarki," the Amishman said. "If Waziri does not serve me well, I have an enormous boar who will, if kept long enough from wholesomer food, rid me of a lazy farm-hand." Waziri grinned at all the attention he was getting from the two most important men in town, and sat expectantly as the turbaned elder brought in coffee. Stoltzfoos watched the Sarki, and aped his actions. Water was served with the coffee; this was to rinse the mouth that the beverage could be tasted with fresh taste buds. The coffee was brown as floodwater silt, heavy with sugar, and very hot; and the cups had no handles. "You are the first European I have seen for many years, friend Haruna," the Sarki said. "It is five years gone that the white off-worlders came, and with a black man as their voice purchased with silver the land you now farm." "They bought well," Aaron said; "the seller sold justly. When the fist of winter loosens, the soil will prove as rich as butter." "When the first green breaks through, and you may break the soil without offense, you will do well," Kazunzumi said. "You are a man who loves the land." "My fathers have flourished with the soil for twenty generations," the Amishman said. "I pray another twenty may live to inherit my good fortune." "Haruna," the Sarki said, "I see that you are a man of the book, that volume of which Mother in her grace turns over a fresh page each spring. Though your skin is as pale as the flesh of my palm, though you have but one wife, though you speak throat-deep and strangely, yet you and I are more alike than different. The Mother has given you light, Haruna, her greatest gift." "I thank the Sarki for his words," Aaron said. "Sir, my good and only wife--I am a poor man, and bound by another law than that of the fortunate Kazunzumi--adds her thanks to mine for the rich gifts the Chief of Datura presented us, his servants. In simple thanks, I have some poor things to tender our benefactor."