And when Noche, who would have cracked the ribs of a grown man as well, set him down, the boy staggered and was sick, and admitted they were at the Smithy. He had been entirely within his instruction in that, but he must have seen the unwisdom of telling the truth as he had been instructed, when the Outliers set out immediately in that direction. His distress was evident and genuine, he moaned and whimpered, came fawning to Persilope. “Why, what ails the boy?” said he, perplexed. “We want no more of you.” “But, oh, I have lied to you,” whined the lad. “I have lied; you will kill me when you learn how I have lied. They are not at the Smithy.” “Where then?” “Oh, oh, I do not know. Over there. At Eagle Rock, perhaps. But certainly not at the Smithy.” His anxiety undid him; Noche came close. “Shall I say three to you, my youngling?” The boy fell silent and shivering. All the rest of that journey Noche kept him serviceable by the mere motion of his arms. The place called the Smithy lies in the pit of a blind cañon, all of rusty red volcanic stone. Half-cooled it seems, smudged black with smoke, encrusted with flakes of dark lichen like soot. Some Junipers grow there, wind depressed, all asquat above the rocks like dwarfed, warty things crept out of the ruins to take the sun. In the middle of the pit half a score of pines staggered together as if awry with labor at the cold forges. Here the Far-Folk repaired to wait the smith and gloat upon his work. Here, when the earth melted in its own shadow under a sky of dusky blueness, whitening to an unrisen moon, the Outliers found them. The Far-Folk had eaten, and sat about on the broken stones gloating. Even in repose, and from the top of the hill where the Outliers looked down at them, they had the attitudes of exultation. The King’s Desire lay uncorded in their midst, the little low fire struck a thousand bright reflections from it. Red eyes of gems winked from behind a screen of golden fret. At the head of the circle sat the chief of the Far-Folk, and the Cup of the Four Quarters was between his knees. This Oca was a lithe man, well bronzed, of a singular, wild, fearless bearing; he had a beard of thick, wavy locks that he blew back from his lips as he talked, accommodated to the carriage of his head like sculptor work. Around his mouth there was the evidence of something half-formed, undependable, the likeness of half fabled wood-creatures. In his eyes, which were bright and roving, and on his brow, there was the witness of extraordinary intelligence. He had a laugh, short and bubbling, that came always at the end of his words and belied their seriousness; it was as if some sardonic half-god sat in him and laughed at his assumption of being a man. He laughed now as the Outliers looked down on him, lifting the Cup of the Four Quarters, blowing back his long lip locks to drink.