But we were to make no more discoveries that day. The long-delayed reaction against our tremendous exertions and perils of the past few days was hard upon us. We must have fallen asleep simultaneously, and been carried to bed by the attendants, in a log-like insensibility; and then we slept the clock round _twice_. Whether it was wholly a natural sleep, or in part prolonged by artificial means for our benefit, I don't know; I have a very shadowy recollection of coming half awake once and seeing Kalliboas beside my couch and hearing him speak to me, but I didn't wake fully till the sun was high, and then I learned on the indisputable testimony of the servants that it was the third day from our falling asleep. We were now both as full of energy as we had been at the beginning of the expedition, to say nothing of ravenously hungry again; and we breakfasted on food similar to that of our first meal. Hardly had we finished eating when Kalliboas appeared. The old man saluted us with the stern courtesy he invariably showed, and began to talk to Poyning, slowly, in the language of the valley. The conversation had to be translated to me sentence by sentence, but by the end of it I was already beginning to get a hint of the modifications I must make in _my_ Greek to follow the speech of these people. I may say that within a week I was able to stumble along with it myself a little, and before the month was out I could understand most of what was said to me. Our first inquiry was, of course, for Philipson. 'You will see him to-day,' said Kalliboas. 'Is he well?' demanded Poyning. The old man made some answer at which Poyning started slightly. 'What does he say?' I cried. 'Philipson's perfectly well, according to him. But I notice _he speaks of him as the Prince_.' We remained staring at one another for an instant. 'And I have more than a notion the old gentleman does not welcome questions on the subject,' continued Poyning quietly. 'We must go slow.' I too had noticed an enhanced stiffness in the old man's manner, as if he was a little scandalised, and he had certainly looked very straight at us when the name Philipson caught his ear. Why this should be so I couldn't guess, but there was very palpably something about him that warned us to drop the subject. Poyning accordingly did so, and began asking the old man questions about himself and the city in general. He answered frankly enough for the most part, though we didn't take long to grasp that there was a point beyond which we weren't going to get enlightenment from him. What we did learn was this.