the sentence had expired, no one had ever been known to get
back into it. Of course, in a world without seasons or moons,
and hence without any but an arbitrary year, long periods of
time are not easy to count accurately. The basket may often
have arrived thirty or forty days to one side or the other of
the proper date. This was only a technicality, however, for if
keeping time was difficult in the attic world, it was probably
impossible in Hell.
Hoifcth’s guards tied the free end of his tether to a branch
and settled down around him. One abstractedly passed a
pine cone to him, and he tried to occupy his mind with the
business of picking the ]uicy seeds from it, but somehow they
had no flavor.
More captives were being brought in now, while the Spokes-
man watched with glittering black eyes from his high perch.
There was Mathild the Forager, shivering as if with ague,
the fur down her left side glistening and spiky, as though she
had inadvertently overturned a tank plant on herself. After
her was .brought Alaskon the Navigator, a middle-aged man
only a few years younger than Honath himself; he was tied
up next to Honath, where he settled down at once, chewing
at a joint of cane with apparent indifference.
Thus far, the gathering had proceeded without more than
a few words being spoken, but that ended when the guards
tried to bring Seth the Needlesmith from the nets. He could
be heard at onoe, over the entire distance to the glade, al-
ternately chattering and shrieking in a mixture of tones that
might mean fear or fury. Everyone in the glade but Alaskon