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a town that looked down toward the ruins and the river and the broad plain beyond, through which it ran into an autumn sunset.
    The town, we found, was seething with excitement, crowded with visitors from as far as fifty miles around, on account of what was to take place the following day. We asked questions, as ignorant wandering peddlers, and were answered readily enough. What we learned was horrifying.
    The day was called by different names—some spoke of the Hunt, others of Execution Day.
    In my native England, murderers were hanged, a brutal and disgusting thing but one which was thought necessary to protect the innocent, and which was carried out expeditiously and as humanely as such a practice could be. Here, instead, they were kept in prisonuntil one day in the autumn, when the grapes were in and pressed and the first new wine ready. Then a Tripod came, and one by one the condemned were turned loose, and the Tripod hunted them while the townspeople watched and drank wine and cheered the sight. Tomorrow there were four to be hunted and killed, a greater number than there had been for several years. On that account the excitement was the greater. The new wine would not be served until the day, but there was old wine enough and a good deal of drunkenness as they slaked their thirsts and nursed their feverish anticipations.
    I turned from the sight, sickened, and said to Fritz, “At least we can leave at daybreak. We do not have to stay and watch what happens.”
    He looked at me calmly. “But we must, Will.”
    “Watch a man, whatever his crime, sent out for a Tripod to course him like a hare? While his fellow men make wagers on the time he will last?” I was angry and showed it. “I do not call that an entertainment.”
    “Nor do I. But anything which concerns the Tripods is important. It is as it was when we were in the City together. Nothing must be overlooked.”
    “You do it, then. I will go on to the next halt, and wait for you there.”
    “No.” He spoke tolerantly but firmly. “We were instructed to work together. Besides, between here and the next village, Max might put his foot in a hole and throw me and I might break my neck in the fall.”
    Max and Moritz were the names he had given the two donkeys, after characters in certain stories thatGerman boys were told in their childhood. We both smiled at the thought of the sure-footed Max putting a foot wrong. But I realized that there was a lot in what Fritz said: witnessing the scene was part of our job and not to be shirked on account of unpleasantness.
    “All right,” I said. “But we move on the moment it’s over. I don’t want to stay in this town any longer than I must.”
    He looked around the cafe in which we were sitting. Men sang drunkenly and banged their glasses on the wooden tables, spilling wine. Fritz nodded.
    “I neither.”
    •  •  •
    The Tripod came during the night. In the morning it stood in a field just below the town, silent, motionless, as those other Tripods had stood at the tournament of the Tour Rouge and the Games Field. This was a day of festival. Flags were flown, lines of bunting ran from roof to roof across the narrow streets, and street traders were out early, selling hot sausages, sweetmeats, sandwiches of chopped raw meat and onion, ribbons and trinkets. I looked at a tray one man was carrying. It contained a dozen or more little wooden Tripods, each holding in its tentacle the tiny agonized figure of a man. The trader was a cheerful, red-faced man and I saw another as kindly looking, a prosperous gaitered farmer with a bushy white beard, buy two of them for his twin grandchildren, a flaxen-headed boy and pigtailed girl of six or seven.
    There was much competition for the good vantage points. I did not feel like pressing for one, but Fritzhad already fixed things. Many householders, whose windows looked down from the town, rented space at them, and he had bought places for us. The charge was high, but it