“Only a brother, and he went overseas to Mancherei when the Prophet began to preach there. Somebody said he went beyond to the Green Isles afterward, when the Prophet left. We do not hear from him any more. . . . But he couldn’t use the Blue Star anyway, unless he were bound with a girl from one of the other families, who could witch it for him.” Overhead the sky was deepening, with one faint easterly star agleam, a long slow smoke rose in convolutions from the chimney of a cot down there, (and Rodvard thought desperately of the lovely light-haired girl who had come so many times to search witch-family records at his clerk’s cabinet in the Office of Pedigree, but she was a baron’s daughter by her badge, and even if he did obtain the Blue Star from this one, and used it to win the light-haired girl, then Lalette would be a witch and put a spell on him—oh tangle!). The hand within his stirred. “I must go,” said Lalette again. (He looks something like Cleudi, she was thinking, but not so old and hard and a little romantic, and he had eye enough to catch the wonderful tiny flash of green among the blue when the sun dipped under.) “Ah, no. You shall not go, not yet. This is a magic evening and we will keep it forever till all’s dark.” Her face softened a trifle in the fading light, but she pulled to withdraw her hand. “Truly.” He clung the tighter, feeling heart-beat, vein-beat in the momentary small struggle. “What if I will not let you go till lantern-glass and the gates are closed?” ”Then Uncle Bontembi will expect me to make a confession and if I do not, he will put a fine on me, and it will be bad for my mother because we are so poor.” “But if I kept you, it would be to run away with you, ah, far beyond the Shining Mountains, and live with you forever.” Her hand went passive again, she leaned toward him a trifle, as though to see more surely the expression on his face. “Do you mean that, Rodvard Bergelin?” He caught breath. “Why—why should I say it else?” “You do not. Let me go, let me go, or I’ll make you.” She half turned, trying to rise, bringing the other hand to help pull loose his fingers. “Will you witch me, witch?” he cried, struggling, and his grasp slipped to her wrist. “No—.” She snatched at the held hand with the other, catching the thumb and crying fiercely; “I’ll break my own finger, I swear it, if you do not let go.” “No. . . .” He flung her two hands apart. Lithe as a serpent, she wrung one and then the other from his grasp, but it was with an effort that carried her off balance and supine asprawl. He rolled on his hip to pin her down, hands on her elbows, breast to breast, and was kissing her half-opened mouth till she stopped trying, turning her face from his and whispering: “Let me go. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.”