So we agreed to wait, and as we thought that the loose stone in the floor was now the point that threatened us, we sat closely round it. I kept the bow beside me, thinking to send a shaft through any opening that might appear, but as the time passed without movement I loosed my knapsack, and finding thread and a strong needle, I commenced to repair my rags as best I was able, my companion watching, half in amusement and half in sympathy, and wondering why the creatures of my race never tried to train their skins to utility. Then for some time she was silent, her head rested on her updrawn knees, and when at last she moved again she told me, “I suppose you think of us as all being alike, as we live the same lives, just as I should think of your kind, if I were among them, while to you they are widely different by character and appearance and occupation. But we are not so. I have a vice which I cannot break, which is shared by one only among all our thousands. Our Leaders have considered it, and showed us that it comes only when our minds are tired by new things, and desire rest when we do not will to take it. “Then our thoughts change to sleep of themselves, and on a note which is not of our own choosing. “There was a distant time when I was very foolish, and I went into a part of the ocean where there was much depth and great darkness. There I found a pressure which came upon me so that I could not release myself. I was held there very long, with a horror which you may have some power to imagine. “When the time came at which our nation assembles, and my absence was noticed, the Leader whose body we are now seeking, and who is like myself in the love of strange and difficult ways, though of a much higher capacity to traverse them successfully, undertook to search for me, and knowing the direction which I had been seen to go, she at last discovered and released me, by methods which would be beyond your comprehension, if I should attempt to tell them. In doing this she risked her own life, and lost so much of her vitality that she rested afterwards for many years till her strength returned, and did not even take part in the Councils of the Seven. “Now, when I wished to gain my own way, I looked for every argument that would support me, and I recalled this to my Leader’s mind, as a reason why I should go, if someone must be risked to seek her. Then, as we sat here, the horror of that place came back to me, and in a moment I was asleep and within it. But it has left me now, and, I hope, for ever.... “It is in my mind that there will be fighting when that stone moves, and that I am pledged to help you.”