As The Star drifted lower on the sky, he began to worry. "Someone should have come for me by now," he told himself. "Unless--" He finally banked the fire with turf and started out on foot for the junction of the brook and the creek. Walking made it seem quite a distance, and The Star was still lower, painting the eastern mountains gold and red, before he came in sight of the camp. "Ho! It's still there!" he exclaimed in relief. Someone had seen him, for when he had gone a little way further, a figure showed against the dark tents, walking toward Yorgh. He wondered where all the carts were. He was still a quarter of a mile from camp when the lone figure met him. It was Kwint, and he had changed somewhat in the four hours or so since they had parted. He wore a discolored swelling beneath his left eye, over which he peered at Yorgh. "You can't come back!" he said glumly. "What?" "Tefior sent me out to say they don't think your latest joke was funny. They won't let you come back." "Joke? What do you talk of, man?" demanded Yorgh. "I suppose you meant just a little scare with that stampede, but it passed right below camp--where the wollies were kept!" Yorgh realized then why Kwint had walked out to meet him. The tribe's animals must have run their best as soon as the picket line went down, and it would take time to catch them. He explained what had happened. "Well ... seeing the condition of you," admitted Kwint, examining the tattered giant before him, "I myself believe it was really that way. But you know, Yorgh, it is said of you--" "That I seldom speak in earnest," Yorgh finished for him. "But I did what I could! Look at me! I am practically naked to the rays of The Star!" Kwint was silent. "Well, say something!" roared Yorgh. The other kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot. "Even so," he murmured, "it would be best to stay out a few days, till we can tell your side of it around. They wanted to kill you!" "_Kill me!_" gasped Yorgh. It was a rough life they led, with brawling and even wounds when tribes mingled, but the one strict taboo was that no human might kill another--at least, not completely. It was the law of all tribes, handed down with legends that they had come to The World from the stars and were once as numerous as the stars. "I tried to quiet Moyt with my spear butt," said Kwint, "for he was talking for hanging; but he is almost as big as you and knocked me down, as you can see. Then the boy came charging out of his father's tent and pushed the cooking pot over on Moyt, for which Tefior beat him and tied him to the tent pole. And--this hurts me to say--the water wasn't even hot!" "And they all believed it of me?" said Yorgh despondently. "Not all. Vaneen, I must say, tried to speak for you with others of us. But we were few to the numbers whose saddles you have greased or whose girls you have frightened out of swimming holes. Besides, we can't find the wollies."