My companion interpreted--“The seven were judges, and the two were witnesses in a recent trial which has brought them all to this end, very justly. The seven cannot close their wings, which are broken at birth in recognition that they are of a high caste which does no work.” (I thought of the finger-nails of a Chinese mandarin, but I was too much interested in the tale which her Leader had obtained from them to break her thought to discuss it.) “The other two can use their wings, but they do not fly as a bird does. They can use them only to flutter up to the perches on which they sleep. It appears that there is some reason in their own land why they should not sleep on the ground, but it was not explained. “The two came before the judges with a complaint against a female of their kind. She had been short of food, which, it seems, is divided among them according to certain duties which they fulfil, which are sometimes very difficult to complete, or from attempting which they might even be forbidden by others who have more power than themselves. “Lacking food, and knowing that these two had it in plenty, she asked them for some, which they refused to give. She then took it, while they were absent. “The judges did not punish these two who had refused food to the one who needed it, and who were not ashamed of the tale they told. “They decided that the one who had taken the food she needed should be beaten. “They did not know that there was any world beyond that in which they lived, or that the Dwellers existed. “But the Dwellers had watched them, and it appears that they were appalled at the wickedness of the creatures that they had caused to continue, when nature would have destroyed them. They intended at first to end the colony, thinking that they had no right to let such creatures live, whatever they might learn by observing them, but in the end they relented. “They have removed these nine for the fate they merit, and have deputed one of themselves to endeavour to teach the first decencies of existence to the remainder of their kind. “The Dwellers can be very merciful.” I answered, “The tale is strange enough, but it contains some things which are less so to me than they must be to you, for I have known of such in my own time and race. But there is one thing that puzzles me. When these creatures have fallen into the boiling tanks, and their bodies have become sodden with heat, and the Killers have sucked them in, it will be an end of their bodies surely, and the bodies of the Killers (who may be no better, though, it is true, we know no such thing of them, as you have told of these) will benefit. “But that is their bodies only. If these creatures exist apart from their bodies, what is gained?”