“She did not like my plan. I thought that she would refuse it, and I held to it with all the force I had, which was little. Then she closed her mind from me. I knew she had many thoughts which she would not show me. At last she decided, ‘You may do this, if you can. But you must not ask this animal to go down to the Dwellers to aid you. If he offer to do so, you may take him with you. But he must make his own plan before he hear of yours, and to that he must keep. You must be in hiding before the sun goes down. If we should return this way, and should meet with the Dwellers, you may watch us meet, but you must hold your minds blank and closed, so that neither they nor we can perceive you, unless we ourselves should signal to you. You must not release the Bat-winged men, nor allow their escape. They must die, as the Dwellers have willed.’ That is all she told me, but there is none like her for foresight, even of the Seven, or for plans that are so made that they can change as the chances alter, and still reach to where they will. She saw me foolish, but she decided to make a plan which used my folly. I am glad that we shall go together, and shall see the homes of the Dwellers.” I answered, “I am glad also. I cannot say that if I had no search to make I should give myself to the Dwellers, as your Leader advised so kindly. They might decide my fate with great wisdom, but I prefer to do that for myself. As she said, I am not easily tamable. Besides, if I once get clear of this place, I think I might find means both to hide and to live in this new world, and I should well like to explore it. It is already apparent to me that it is full of beauty and of strange wonders, of which I have yet seen very little--and the tunnels of the Dwellers seem the more perilous way. But we both have good reasons for the choice we have made, and I think we may do better together than either could do separately. But why should we not attempt escape immediately? Why should we not return to the lower way while there is still daylight to guide us, and before the Dwellers appear, to add a new peril to the road we take?” “I am not certain which is best, and I think, as you do, that we might escape at any time with no great risk, if we were sudden and rapid in the attempt; but I think that she wished us to remain to see whether my friends will still come by this way, and are allowed to pass in safety. There is also this to think, that if the Dwellers always return to the interior when the night comes, and they travel more rapidly than we should do, they might overtake us if we enter one of the tunnels earlier, while, if we follow behind them, we may do so in safety, with little fear that they will know of our coming till we have passed the tunnel and arrive at that which lies beneath it.”