Whoever had lifted the Treasure had done it most cleverly. Every particle of the soil removed had been taken out on skins and put back again with filling brought ready for the purpose, so that no sinking of the surface should betray the theft. It had been done recently, between the rains. On the white, abraided bark of the pine there were splatterings of the rapid downpour of the last heavy shower. Let but a few weeks of stormy weather go over and it would have been impossible to say that the place had been visited. The Outliers might have gone on guarding an empty cache for generations. They shuddered back from such a possibility like men suddenly upon a brink. They were, in fact, so shocked and astounded by the theft that their faculties were all abroad. They dug wide and furiously, Noche pawing over every crumbling clod with a whimpering sound like a hound at a fox’s earth. High up as the place was, higher ridges made a pit of it which now, as the light receded, they flung full of blackness. On the combe above, the young pines were black against pale twilight, dancing and deriding. Night-eyed as the Outliers were, they dared not risk the loss of the faintest clue by trampling heedlessly. The theft and the cunning manner of it pointed to one thing—the Far-Folk. On that point they were sure; and on one other. The King’s Desire was gone, it should come back again. They swore it. One of them lifted up his hand to take the oath, as the custom was, by the honor of the Maiden Ward. “Stop!” said Prassade. I do not know what things leaped together in the man’s mind, what circumstance but half observed, what weakness of his blood yet unconfessed, what scrupulosity of honor. “Stop!” he said, and the swearer’s hand slacked limply. Mancha propped it up fiercely with his own. “By the honor of the Maiden Ward,” he swore, “it comes back again.” Prassade gurgled in his throat. In the gray light as they looked at each other, it grew upon them that the loss of the Treasure meant betrayal. Daria, Zirriloë, the four keepers, to whom should they apportion dishonor? From that time, said Herman, no man looked full at his neighbor or spoke freely what he thought until they came to Deep Fern. In the meantime it had occurred to me that I was not seeing as much of Ravenutzi as was implied in my promise to Trastevera. Besides, I thought it might be interesting to know what he thought of the redisposal of the King’s Treasure. I had followed the use of the Outliers up to this time in not speaking of it to him.