He took up his theme again when we had entered the house and were facing each other across the table, in a room that looked out over the forest. The shutters were unfastened, the window open, and I could see how, on the further shore of the waste-lands, the light feebly ebbed and died against the black cliff of the wood. “We have to choose between freedom and safety,” he said. “The individual is too wild and dangerous for the common life. He must make his agreement with the community; submit to become a member of the people’s body. But I”--he paused and laughed--“_I_ have taken the liberty of looking out of the back window.” While he spoke I had been aware of a sound that seemed to come from below the floor of the room in which we were sitting. And when he laughed I fancied that I heard the response of a snuffling cry. He looked at me mockingly across the table. “It’s an echo from the jungle,” he said. “Some trick of reflected sound. I can always hear it in this room at night.” I shivered and stood up. “I prefer the safety of our common life,” I told him. “It may be that I have a limited mind and am afraid, but I find my happiness in the joys of security and shelter. The wild terrifies me.” “A limited mind?” he commented. “Probably it is rather that you lack a fire in the blood.” I was glad to leave him, and he on his part made no effort to detain me. It was not long after this visit of mine that the people first began to whisper about him in the village. At the beginning they brought no charge against him, talking only of his strangeness and of his separation from our common interests. But presently I heard a story of some fierce wild animal that he caged and tortured in the prison of his house. One said that he had heard it screaming in the night, and another that he had heard it beating against the door. And some argued that it was a threat to our safety, since the beast might escape and make its way into the village; and some that such brutality, even though it were to a wild animal, could not be tolerated. But I wondered inwardly whether the affair were any business of ours so long as he kept the beast to himself. I was a member of the Council that year, and so took part in the voting when presently the case was laid before us. But no vote of mine would have helped him if I had dared to overcome my reluctance and speak in his favour. For whatever reservations may have been secretly withheld by the members of the Council, they were unanimous in condemning him. We went, six of us, in full daylight, to search his house. He received us with a laugh, and told us that we might seek at our leisure. But though we sought high and low, peering and tapping, we found no evidence that any wild thing had ever been concealed there. And within a month of the day of our search he left the village.