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chest.
    “My roses are dead already,” the wild man said, “but I have leaves still. Ask the gardener if you do not know what leaves are.”
    “This thing is a thing with leaves,” the gardener said at once in a deep voice.
    “I know what leaves are. I have no need to ask the gardener. Leaves are the foliage of trees and plants which give them their green appearance,” the toad said.
    “This thing is a thing with leaves,” the gardener repeated, adding, to clarify the matter, “the leaves give it a green appearance.”
    “I know what things with leaves are,” said the toad. “I have no need to ask you, gardener.”
    It looked as if an interesting, if limited, argument would break out between the two robots, but at this moment one of the other machines said something.
    “This rose tree can speak,” it declared.
    “Rose trees cannot speak,” the toad said at once. Having produced this pearl, it was silent, probably mulling over the strangeness of life. Then it said, slowly, “Therefore either this rose tree is not a rose tree or this rose tree did not speak.”
    “This thing is a thing with leaves,” began the gardener doggedly. “But it is not a rose tree. Rose trees have stipules. This thing has no stipules. It is a breaking buckthorn. The breaking buckthorn is also known as the berry-bearing alder.”
    This specialized knowledge extended beyond the vocabulary of the toad. A strained silence ensued.
    “I am a breaking buckthorn,” the wild man said, still holding his pose. “I cannot speak.”
    At this, all the machines began to talk at once, lumbering around him for better sightings as they did so, and barging into each other in the process. Finally, the toad’s voice broke above the metallic babble.
    “Whatever this thing with leaves is, we must uproot it. We must kill it,” it said.
    “You may not uproot it. That is a job only for gardeners,” the gardener said. Setting its shears rotating, telescoping out a mighty scythe, it charged at the toad.
    Its crude weapons were ineffectual against the toad’s armour. The latter, however, realized that they had reached a deadlock in their investigation.
    “We will retire to ask Charles Gunpat what we shall do,” it said. “Come this way.”
    “Charles Gunpat is in conference,” the scout robot said. “Charles Gunpat must not be disturbed in conference. Therefore we must not disturb Charles Gunpat.”
    “Therefore we must wait for Charles Gunpat,” said the metal toad imperturbably. He led the way close by where Smithlao stood; they all climbed the steps and disappeared into the house.
    Smithlao could only marvel at the wild man’s coolness. It was a miracle he still survived. Had he attempted to run, he would have been killed instantly; that was a situation the robots had been taught to cope with. Nor would his double talk, inspired as it was, have saved him had he been faced with only one robot, for the robot is a single-minded creature.
    In company, however, they suffer from a trouble which sometimes afflicts human gatherings: a tendency to show off their logic at the expense of the object of the meeting.
    Logic! That was the trouble. It was all robots had to go by. Man had logic and intelligence; he got along better than his robots. Nevertheless, he was losing the battle against Nature. And Nature, like the robots, used only logic. It was a paradox against which man could not prevail.
    As soon as the file of machines had disappeared into the house, the wild man ran across the lawn and climbed the first flight of steps, working toward the motionless girl. Smithlao slid behind a beech tree to be nearer to them; he felt like an evildoer, watching them without an interposed screen, but could not tear himself away; he sensed that here was a little charade which marked the end of all that man had been. The wild man was approaching Ployploy now, moving slowly across the terrace as if hypnotized.
    She spoke first.
    “You were resourceful,” she