Shib’s ideas about beauty were academic. Thia dancing, with a rose-bush on one side of her and a sunset on the other, was beautiful. The dragon was ugly. But Shib was not going to waste breath in argument with his absurd brother. What mattered was not that the dragon was ugly, but that the dragon was a public nuisance, to be abated if it could not be suppressed. The spearmen had failed to suppress it, and would continue to fail. But Shib thought he saw a way to abatement. He had carefully watched throughout the night the dragon’s demeanour. He had noted how, despite so many wanderers’ clear testimony as to the taste of all dragons, this creature had seemed to palter in choice between the penned sheep near to him and the mobile people across the stream; noted that despite the great talons on his feet he did not attempt to climb any of the trees; noted the long rests he took here and there. On these observations Shib had formed a theory, and on this theory a scheme. And during the family meal in the cave he recited the speech he was going to make at the council. His parents were filled with admiration. Veo, however, did not listen to a word. Nor did he even attend the council. He stayed in the cave, making with a charred stick, on all vacant spaces, stark but spirited pictures of the dragon. * * * * * I will not report in even an abridged form the early proceedings of the council. For they were tedious. The speakers were many, halting, and not to the point. Shib, when his chance at length came, shone. He had a dry, unattractive manner; but he had something to say, he said it clearly and tersely, and so he held his audience. Having stated the facts he had noted, he claimed no certainty for the deduction he had made from them. He did not say, ‘Know then surely, O homelanders, that this is a slothful dragon.’ Nor, for the matter of that, did he say he had furnished a working hypothesis, or a hypothesis that squared with the known facts, or a hypothesis that held the field. Such phrases, alas, were impossible in the simple and barbarous tongue of the homelanders. But ‘May it not be,’ Shib did say, ‘that this is a slothful dragon?’ There was a murmur of meditative assent. ‘Hearken then,’ said Shib, ‘to my counsel. Let the spearmen go slay two deer. Let the shepherds go slay two sheep, and the goat-herds two goats. Also let there be slain three geese and as many ducks. Or ever the sun leave us, and the dragon wake from his sleep, let us take all these up and lay them at the mouth of the cave that was Gra’s cave. Thus it may be that this night shall not be as the last was, but we all asleep and safe. And if so it betide us, let us make to the dragon other such offerings to-morrow, and on all days that are to come.’