Brud called Thol to witness. Thol, afraid that if he told the truth he would be beaten by everybody but Brud, said nothing. Favourite Thia was not so reticent. She described clearly the dragon’s head and tail and the black path through the grass. Something like panic passed around the circle; not actual panic, for--surely Thia’s bright dark eyes had deceived her. A dragon was one thing, the homeland another: there couldn’t possibly be a dragon in the homeland. Mainly that they might set Thia’s mind at rest, a few people went to reconnoitre. Presently, with palsied lips, they were admitting that there could be, and was, a dragon in the homeland. They ran stuttering the news in all directions, ran knowing it to be true, yet themselves hardly believing it, ran hoping others would investigate it and prove it a baseless rumour, ran gibbering it to the very confines of the homeland. Slowly, incredulously, people from all quarters made their way to the place where so many were already gathered. The whole population was at length concentrated in what is Berkeley Square. Up the sky the sun climbed steadily. Surely, thought the homelanders, a good sign? This god of theirs could not look so calm and bright if there were really a dragon among his chosen people? Bold adventurers went scouting hopefully up the hill, only to return with horror in their eyes, and with the same old awful report upon their lips. Before noon the whole throng was convinced. Eld is notoriously irreceptive of new ideas; but even the oldest inhabitant stood convinced now. Silence reigned, broken only by the bleatings, cacklings, quackings, of animals unreleased from their pens or coops, far and near. Up, straight up through the windless air went the column of smoke steadfastly, horribly, up higher than the eyes of the homelanders could follow it. What was to be done? Could nothing be done? Could not some one, at any rate, say something? People who did not know each other, or had for years not been on speaking terms, found themselves eagerly conversing, in face of the common peril. Solemn parties were formed to go and view the dragon’s track, its odious scorched track from the marshes. People remembered having been told by wanderers that when a dragon swam a river he held high his head, lest his flames should be quenched. The river that had been crossed last night by this monster was a great god. Why had he not drowned the monster? Well, fire was a great god also, and he deigned to dwell in dragons. One god would not destroy another. But again, would even a small god deign to dwell in a dragon? The homelanders revised their theology. Fire was not a god at all.