"And bread and meat mean life, don't they? Well, and suppose one doesn't happen to possess a long purse-string laden with these wonderful, miracle-working bits of token-money, what then? A woman can't put on a quilted coat and steel cap and go out with the raiders to earn her share of the loot. Fancy my teaching a fat House-dweller how to dance on a red-hot plate or riding the toll roads of the West Inch in a jacket full of arrow-holes." "That is true," agreed Nanna, gravely. Esmay rose and walked excitedly up and down the long room. "It's just hopeless, Nanna, to stay on here in this city of the dead." She stopped and faced her sister. "So I have decided; I am going back to my mother's people. There is a chance in their world for a woman to secure her own living; here she can only starve or accept some man's protection." The elder woman remonstrated feebly, but the girl swept her aside. "Listen to me, Nanna. You know that Messer Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, is my uncle, my mother's own brother. She ever insisted that in his charity I had a final resource. He might not offer it, but surely he could not deny me, if I sought it. Nanna, you recall what the mother herself said--how she always believed that the message would reach him. My own uncle and Councillor Primus of Croye," she concluded, hopefully. But Nanna was not to be so easily convinced. "But, Esmay, it is impossible," she exclaimed. "You could never escape from Doom." "But I will." "You cannot. The High Bridge to the north is always guarded, and on the other three sides of the city there is deep water." "I shall manage it," returned the girl, confidently. "It is simply a question of my going empty-handed to my uncle's house. Now gold among the House-dwellers has a value that it does not possess with us; so Ulick once told me. They use it as money." "Here in Doom it is nothing," assented Nanna, "save that we women like the pretty things that the ancients fashioned from it." "Precisely; and as you know there is not much of it in existence, even here in Doom, where silver is almost as common as iron." "Well, and then?" "Don't you see? If only golden tongues could plead my cause in Croye I should be independent, even of my uncle Hugolin. Now there is store of this gold somewhere in Doom. It must be so, for the war-galleys always carry a money-chest when they sail to the northern colonies." "A treasure," said Nanna, slowly. "Who would know of it here in Doom? Dom Gillian himself--or perhaps----" "Master Quinton Edge," supplied Esmay, and thereupon silence fell between them. The minutes passed away. Then, suddenly, Esmay stopped in her monotonous pacing of the room and flung herself on her knees by her sister's chair. "You goose!" she exclaimed, with tender suspicion. "I believe you have been crying."