‘You speak firmly, O great dragon! Yet will not I obey you. Tell me of your work. Is it to the marshes that you take the beasts and the birds?’ ‘Yea. Begone, small dear one!’ And he stooped down to take the two sheep. ‘Once, long ago, you wished that a lad might help you in your hard work. O Thol, I am as I was, trustier than any lad. It were better that you should go twice, not thrice, every night, to the marshes. I will always take the birds.’ And she rose to take them. But a thought, a very important thought, came to her, giving her pause. And she said, ‘The fire must first be tended.’ ‘It has no need yet,’ he answered. ‘I tend it when I come back from the last journey.’ ‘To-night it shall be tended earlier. And I will so tend it that it shall last long.’ She was down on her knees and off into the smoke before he could stop her. He followed her, protesting that such work was not for her. She did it, nevertheless, very well. And presently, side by side, he with two sheep, she with three birds’ necks in either fist, they went forth into the starlight, and down away to the marshes. There, having duly sunk their burdens, they took each other by the hand, and turned homeward. At one of the running brooks on their way home, Thia halted. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘will I wash my face well. And do you, too, O Thol, wash yours, so that when we wake in the morning mine shall not displease you.’ * * * * * Every night Thia accompanied Thol on one of the two journeys; and during the other she would go to the forest and gather wood, so that there should always be plenty of fuel in hand. She was sorry to have had to abandon her geese, for she felt they would not be as happy with any one as they had been with her. Nothing else whatever was there to mar her joy in the life that she and Thol were leading together, and in the good that they were doing. It amused her to know that the homelanders would think she had wandered away--she who was serving them so well. Its very secrecy made her life the more joyous. Daily she prayed to the sun and other gods that she and Thol might live to be very old and might never fail in their work. But the sun and those others were not good listeners.