As day followed day and still Kalliboas didn't appear, we got more and more tired of this virtual captivity, and at last Poyning told one of the attendants point blank that we must go out for exercise. The attendant took us, not to the street, but to a courtyard of the building, and remained close beside us with a purpose there was no mistaking. Poyning demanded of the man we should go farther afield, but he gravely shook his head and replied that it was the order of Kalliboas we should wait his return here. There was no getting over this. We knew little enough of the valley, but we had gathered that Kalliboas figured importantly in it, and I think both of us felt he was a person whose orders it would be extremely unhealthy to disregard; so we bowed to the inevitable with the best grace possible, which, to tell the truth, was an uncommonly bad one. Poyning paced up and down continually, like a caged wild cat, and seemed to have matters on his mind that he wouldn't confide even in me. I also spent a deal of time in the courtyard, from which we could catch glimpses of the populace without, and hear their subdued talk and see from time to time in the distant sky the monstrous bird-shapes that were still an unsolved riddle to us, but for the most part I buried myself in the study of the language, where, at least, there was satisfaction to be got out of this harassing delay. Of Philipson we saw and heard absolutely nothing. I was peevishly inclined to blame him for this, but Poyning, despite his own nerves, took a more generous view. 'Depend upon it, Mirlees,' he said, 'Philipson would come if he could. I have a pretty shrewd notion there is more happening in this valley at the moment than we know anything about.' 'What's to prevent him coming?' 'I make no dogmatic assertion. But from what I saw of that rather picturesque ceremony the other day I would venture a hypothesis that the said and so-called Philipson, having been for reasons best known to themselves received by this people with such extraordinary favour, is now state property and no longer master of his own movements. That's my way of it, anyhow.' At last, on what I think was the eighth day, Kalliboas came. He seemed, or it may be pretended himself totally unconscious of our burning impatience to get out, greeting us as if he had only been an hour gone; and when lunch was brought in, with an additional couch for him, he reclined there slowly and delicately sipping his wine and eating as if it were no way unusual for strangers to be brought into the city and imprisoned after getting the barest glimpse of it. 'We have many things to ask you, Kalliboas,' burst out Poyning at last. The old man returned a suave, measured reply, which I found to my delight I could understand. 'I await your questions,' he said. 'Your people are of Hellene descent, are they not?' 'Hellene blood runs in our veins.'