The tent was half drawn this morning, and no drops reached us, but seldom, light spatterings from high, wind-shaken boughs. Evarra was abroad looking after her family, and Noche had come over with Herman to sit housed with me. The Outliers had, from such indifferent observation as they had made, got the notion that House-Folk were of great fragility as regards weather. They were exceedingly careful of us, though I had seen Noche laugh as he shook the wet from his body, and take the great gusts of wind as a man might the moods of his mistress. He sat opposite us now on a heap of fern, busy at his sling-plaiting, with the placidity of a spinning Hercules, and in a frame to be entertaining. It occurred to me it might be an excellent time to beguile him into talk of the Treasure, much to Herman’s annoyance, for he was of the opinion that my having been a week among the Outliers and no harm having come of it, was no sign it wouldn’t come eventually. “Don’t meddle with their tribal mysteries,” he protested; “if it hadn’t been for their confounded Treasure we would have been on the trail for home by now.” “But consider,” I explained to Herman for Noche’s sake; “if we drink Forgetfulness at the last, what does it matter how much we know before? And besides, he is suffering to tell me. Go on, Noche.” Once you had old Noche started, his talk ran on like the involute patterns he loved to trace upon the sand, looping to let in some shining circumstance or set off some jewel of an incident. It was a wonderful treasure by his account: lamps thick with garnets, crusted with amethysts, and the cup of the Four Quarters which a dead king held between his knees. Outside we could hear the creaking of the boughs as the wind pounced and wallowed, stalking an invisible prey. Within the hut we saw in the old man’s story, the summer island from which the tale began, far southward, rising from the kissing seas. All at once he left off, breathing quick, his nostrils lifted a little, quivering, his head turning from side to side, like a questing dog’s. We had heard nothing but the trickle of rain down the corrugated trunks, but Noche, turning his attention toward the doorway, twitched his great eyebrows once, and presently broke into smiling.