"Yessir." Dawvys, a plump fellow with no hint of his enormous endurance in his look, motioned Rack out of the library. Ewyo said, "Well! How are you, Nirea? Your sister Jann and I have been worrying." "I'm all right." "Did you suffer indignities at the hands of that crazy miner?" He looked like a damned red-faced bear, she thought, and surprised herself by saying, "Revel treated me with--with much consideration." "Huh! Wouldn't have thought it. You want to sleep?" "Don't bother about me," she said, turning. "Get on with your pressing business, father." She went to her room and lay down on the satin-sheeted bed without even removing the tattered rucker's clothes. For a long while she lay there, thinking. Then she did a thing that no one could ever have convinced her she'd do till that day. She changed into a sheer black gown, after bathing of course, and slipped downstairs to her father's private room. She had never been in it, no one but Ewyo had; she had no clear notion of what she was looking for. But an army of questions warred in her mind, and it seemed to her that there were secrets she must discover: answers which she had never looked for, explanations for things she had always taken for granted. For instance, she thought, turning the handle slowly and without noise, why were the gentry the gentry? Why did the gods allow almost anything to her kind, when the ruck had no rights? She shook her head. All her breeding said she was mad, yet she opened the door of the private room and walked in. Dawvys whirled from where he had been bending over a huge leather-bound book on a table. His face was white, but it cleared of panic when he saw her. "The Lady Nirea moves silently." "What are you doing here?" she asked sharply. "The same thing you mean to do, Lady. I'm seeking the answers to certain problems." "Can a rucker read minds like a globe?" He laughed. "It was an obvious guess, Lady." "And have you found answers, Dawvys?" He sighed. "I cannot read, as the Lady knows. No rucker reads." She watched his face a moment. "Stay here," she said. "_I_ can read." "The Lady of the Mink is kind," he said, bowing. The title did not shock her. Strangeness on strangeness! * * * * * The book was full of queer writing, like none she had ever seen. Instead of letters that each stood alone, the letters were joined, each word being a unit without a break; and they seemed to stand up a little from the page, not being sunken into the paper as all printing was that she had seen. With difficulty she read a few sentences. "This day the third in the month of Orbuary I did feed the gods, more than forty of them in the morning and twenty after eating. I am so weak I can hardly hold this pen." "What does it mean?" asked Dawvys.