a youth, "is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's
laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm
and you're a lot better off and he's a hell of a lot better neighbor!"

This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that
Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the
planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and
others.

Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.
Even though presently he sat at breakfast high up on the battlements,
and Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety, he was filled with
forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and
chance was so simple! He asked only a career and riches and a delightful
girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow-citizens. Trivial things!
But it looked like he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of
destiny!

Fani watched him breakfast.

"I don't understand you," she complained. "Anybody else would be proud
of what he'd done and angry with my father. Or don't you think he'll act
ungratefully?"

"Of course I do!" said Hoddan.

"Then why aren't you angry?"

"I'm hungry," said Hoddan.

"And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful," said
Fani in one breath, "and yet you haven't shown the least appreciation of
my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder"--she
pointed and Hoddan nodded--"and having Thal there with orders to serve
you faithfully--"

* * * * *

She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps
leading here from the great hall where conferences took place. He
regarded Hoddan benignly.

"This is a very bad business, my dear fellow," he said benevolently.
"Has Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of
you? They tell me terrible things about you!"

"Yes," said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He said: "One of
them, I think, is named Derec. He's to identify me so good money isn't
wasted paying for the wrong man. The other man's police, isn't he?" He
reflected a moment. "If I were you, I'd start talking at a million
credits. You might get half that."

He bit into the roll as Don Loris looked shocked.

"Do you think," he asked indignantly, "that I would give up the rescuer
of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet, to be locked in a
dungeon for life?"

"Not in those words," conced