thank you." He walked to the window and stood looking out into the blown
spring green of the elm opposite. His ebbed anger had left a residuum of
stubbornness. There was still an act of justice to be consummated and
the position of grand-justicer offered a certain righteous attraction.
As he reminded himself, if you put your will to work on a difficult
action you were fain to commit, after a while the will worked
automatically and your mind functioned without aid from you, and the
action bloomed of itself. This kinetic process was a constant device of
the freakish impulse that he called his devil. He deliberately laid the
train.

"There is one more thing," the alien was saying. Her voice had gained a
wonderful fluency amid the general thaw. "I didn't dare to ask before,
but if we thought of me then--I have always hoped he left some message
for me ... a letter, perhaps."

Hugh smiled agreeably. "In just a moment," he considered, "I am going to
do something so outrageous that I can't even imagine how my dear
families are going to take it." He was about to hurt them severely, but
that was all right. His uncle was a tempered weapon of war that despised
quarter; and as for Aunt Maria, he rather wanted to hurt Aunt Maria for
her own good.

Into the eloquent and mendacious silence that was a gift of their caste
the voice fell humbly: "So there wasn't? I suppose I oughtn't to have
expected it."

"Any time now, Gridley," Hugh signalled to his familiar. Like a
response, a thin breeze tickled the roots of his hair. He swung around
with the pivot of a definite purpose. With an economy of movement that