apricots to see how they had endured being hauled so far.

"What's in the bag?" he demanded, abruptly.

"Medicine. I am a doctor."

"What for? People die anyway."

"A doctor," Verrill explained, concealing his dismay, "is not to keep people from dying. He is to make it more agreeable for them until they finally have to die."

Ardelan addressed his henchmen. The answers summed up to this: that if nothing much ailed a man, he'd get well by himself, and if something really incapacitated him, it would of course be something so serious that he could not last long at the best.

Ardelan digested this wisdom, then asked, "Verrill, can you make knives like these you gave that man?"

"I am a doctor, not a blacksmith."

"Can you make guns or cartridges?"

"No."

"Can you fight?"

Verrill glanced uneasily about, as though Ardelan might be on the point of selecting an opponent to test the stranger's claims. And, having read Verrill's face, Ardelan snorted, and not waiting for a reply, demanded, "Then what are you good for?"

"To treat the sick," Verrill repeated, with growing sense of futility. "To bind wounds. To set broken bones."

"Look at us. We've done very well."

"I can do better."

"Can't work, can't fight! Good for nothing but doctoring. Bad as a priest! Lock him up; I want to think this over."

The guard hustled Verrill and his medical case into an empty granary. They slammed the door and rolled a boulder against it. It made no difference whether or not he could shove the door open; there was nowhere to go if he did get out. He could not find his way back to the trading-post except over the way which his escort had brought him: a guarded way.

In the half-gloom, Verrill noted that the wall had been cracked by earthquakes. These cracks gave him hand and toe holds, to climb up 

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