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inaccessible as if she were already serving Nasa. Anger at the thought of losing her made Loa quite frantic.
    “She is a wicked woman,” raved Loa. “She is a thief, an adultress.”
    Loa's language contained some twenty synonyms for “adultress,” each expressing a different aspect from which the act was regarded; each word was liable to be used as a term of opprobrium, and Loa used them all. His heavy features were drawn together in a scowl of rage.
    “She is a devil, an ape,” said Loa.
    Delli was looking up at him as she crouched in her pen; her eyes were unwinking and her face expressionless.
    “Bring me that stick!” roared Loa, and someone ran and obsequiously fetched it.
    Loa snatched it from him and rushed at the pen. He could not beat her or strike her with any advantage, thanks to the stout palisades which surrounded her. He could only prod her with the stick, but his prods were dangerous and painful, delivered as they were with his full strength. Delli screamed and rolled over, trying to protect her more vulnerable parts; Loa might have killed her then and there had his rage lasted longer. But sanity came back to him, and he let the stick fall, and wiped the sweat from his face with his hands.
    “Bring more vines!” he ordered. “Tough ones. Hard ones. Stringy ones. Mend that hole! Put more vines all round the pen and over the roof, and see that the knots are tight.”
    A fresh idea struck him, a really important one.
    “What old women are there?” he asked. “Ah! There is Nari. Come here, Nari. Vira, tie her legs with vines. Tether her to the pen. Nari, you will watch over Delli. You cannot go away. You will stay here all through the day and the night. If ever Delli tries to bite through the vines you will cry out. Loudly. Have you heard me?”
    The old woman stood on her feeble legs with the sun in her eyes. Oppressed at the same time by the majesty of Loa and by the sunlight she blinked and squirmed.
    “Have you heard me?” shouted Loa.
    “I have heard you,” she piped at last.
    “See that it is done,” said Loa to Vira. “Musini, see that Nari is fed as well.”
    He glowered round at them all; he was still too moved and excited at the moment to consider relapsing again into torpor, and he strode off aimlessly at first. It was only when he was on the way down the street that he remembered a reason for going this way. From the farthest end of the street came the regular tapping of a drum; Tali, one of the sons of Litti, the worker in iron, was beating out a new rhythm. He was always experimenting with such things, perhaps to the detriment of his real work. But a good drummer made an important contribution to the life of the town, and if his father would buy him a wife or two whether Tali worked in iron or not that was all to the good.
    This end of the street was not nearly as quiet or as clean as the other end where Loa's house stood. Here ran the little swampy stream, tributary to the great river two miles away, which supplied the town's drinking water and carried away its trash. The stink of the rotting piles of refuse was perceptible to Loa's nose where he stood, but refuse piles always stank. Where the forest came right to the edge of the town stood Litti's ironworks, in the shade of a group of large trees. On the flat tops of two rocks glowed charcoal fires, blown to a fierce heat by bellows worked by small children.
    Litti was squatting beside them with his eldest son; a short distance away Tah was tapping on his drum while round him a little group of idlers made tentative attempts to adapt a dance step to the rhythm. Litti and his family did not prostrate themselves before Loa; when they were actually engaged in the working of iron there was no need.
    “What of my son's axe?” asked Loa.
    “It will be made,” said Litti tranquilly.
    He raised his white head to see where the sun stood.
    “Now?” asked his son.
    “No, not now,” answered Litti.
    Loa squatted down on his heels to