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is, do you?”
    After that, it was understood between Mitt and Milda that the mission of Mitt’s life was a double one. He was to break the Free Holanders and rid the world of Earl Hadd. Mitt was sure he could do it. So was Milda.
    Milda joined the Free Holanders, too. Mitt was delighted. He had high hopes of it. Milda came to meetings, and she talked as eloquently as anyone there. She loved to talk. She loved leaning forward over the secretive night-light and seeing everyone’s listening face shadowy and attentive. But the sole result was that Milda became as ardent a freedom fighter as anyone there. She talked revolution to Mitt whenever he was at home.
    â€œFlaming Ammet!” Mitt said disgustedly. “It’s like being at a meeting all the time now!”
    All the same, Milda’s talk did make things clearer to Mitt. He was soon able to talk of oppression and uprising, tyranny and leadership from below, and feel he knew what it meant. And when he had leisure to think—which he sometimes did while Flower of Holand ploshed her sturdy way to the fishing grounds—he decided that what it amounted to was that there were two parts to Dalemark: the North, where people were mysteriously free and happy, and the South, where the earls and the rich people were free and happy enough, but where they made darned sure that ordinary people like Mitt and Milda were as unhappy as possible.
    Right, Mitt said to himself. I reckon that sums it up. Now let’s get busy and do something about it.
    But the Free Holanders seemed simply content to talk, and Mitt became increasingly annoyed by them. He was very pleased when another secret society actually killed four of Harchad’s spies. Siriol was not. He told Mitt, with a glum sort of gladness, that things would be very much worse now. And they were.
    Harchad imposed a curfew. Anyone found in the streets after dark was marched away and never seen again. Siriol forbade Mitt to carry messages during that time. Mitt did not quite understand why he should not.
    Then a thief on the waterfront tried to rob a man. He knocked the man down and was taking his money when he found a gold button with the wheatsheaf crest of Holand on it, hidden in the man’s coat. The thief knew it was the badge Harchad gave all his spies, and he was so frightened that he jumped into the harbor and was drowned. Mitt did not understand this story at all.
    â€œWell, if you don’t, I’m not telling you,” was all Siriol would say.
    Then Earl Hadd quarreled with four other earls at once. Everyone in Holand groaned. Much as they detested Hadd, they almost admired him for being so very quarrelsome. “Fallen out with Earl Henda again, has he?” the women in Milda’s sewing shop would say. “Honestly, I never knew anyone like him!” This time, however, Hadd fell out not only with Henda, but with the earls of Canderack, Waywold, and Dermath, too. And so powerful were these earls, and owned so much of South Dalemark between them, that there was some doubt in Holand whether Hadd could hold his own against them all.
    â€œBitten off more than he can chew this time for sure, the old sinner,” Dideo said to Mitt. “Maybe this is where the Free Holanders get their chance.”
    Mitt hoped so. But Harl, Hadd’s eldest son, managed to put himself into Hadd’s good books by suggesting a way to deal with the four earls. Harl, fat and indolent though he was, could sometimes be seen with his brother Navis and a crowd of beaters, servants, and dogs, walking over the Flate and shooting birds with a long silverinlaid fowling piece. Harl was allowed to use a gun, being an earl’s son. No one else was, apart from lords and hearthmen, because there had been so many uprisings in the South. Big ships carried cannon, as a protection against the ships of the North, but guns were otherwise banned. But, said Harl, why not give all the soldiers guns as well? That