Jared Chick from behind his bush called, appealingly, "But I fear I
shall never see thee again and I have some questions to ask of thee!"

"Oh, I promise to look you up somewhere in the world. If you keep on
wearing that suit it will be easy to find you."

The man in armor leaned against a tree and pondered.

"A strange young man, and callous and selfish. But there is truly
something under his shell. I would relish putting some questions to
him."

Then Jared Chick plunked an ash staff from a pile of hoop-poles left by
a chopper and went on his way along shaded woodland paths, avoiding
the main highroad. He decided that it would be better to go by the
roundabout way and show himself on the streets of town instead of on a
rural turnpike where countrified horses did not take kindly to a real
knight-errant.

"It was a good place back there for sleeping," reflected Walker Farr,
remembering the brook, singing over the stones, the whispering alders,
the old-fashioned house, and the somnolent landscape. "That man who has
been living there until the day of his emigration has certainly been
asleep for a long time and is sleeping soundly now; he is having a
wonderful dream. The nightmare will begin shortly and he will wake up."

After a time Farr came into a village, a hamlet of small houses which
toed the crack of a single street. It was near the hour of noon and from
the open windows of kitchens drifted scents of the dinners which the
women were preparing. All the men of the place seemed to be afield; only