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Randolph.
    “It didn’t like Patrick,” said Ted. “He’s like Andrew—he doesn’t believe in magic. Being here just drove him crazy.”
    “Well, we will try what persuasion we may,” said Fence. “And in any case ’twere folly to leave so potent a weapon lying about in the woods like an abandoned doll.”
    Laura thought this was unfair, given all the trouble they had taken to make sure Fence knew where the swords were.
    “What means of persuasion do you suggest?” said Ted.
    “I had thought to come with you,” said Fence.
    Laura let out a delighted chortle. Ted started at Fence for a moment. “Be warned,” he said, “that Laura and I have never been to Australia. We won’t know how to act, necessarily.”
    “How to act,” said Fence, “will be to find those three privily and speak to them so. Where cometh out this path to Australia?”
    “I think Patrick said the back forty.”
    Fence looked patient.
    “It’s on a farm,” said Ted, who had only the faintest idea of what a back forty was himself.
    “Well enough,” said Fence. “I was born on a farm.”
    Ted and Laura both stared at him. He picked up Ruth’s letter from the table where Randolph had thrown it, and held it out to them. It did not take them long to read it. Laura admired the style. They handed it back to Fence, and he stood up shaking out the folds of the absurd starry robe he wore. “What do we stay for?” he said.
    They left Randolph sitting in the dim room among the glints of polished wood and glass and the muted colors of the tapestries. Laura preferred not to wonder what he was thinking.
    At the head of the stairs Fence paused. “Garments,” he said. He fingered the shoulder of Ted’s shirt, and smiled very faintly. “You never had these from the West Tower,” he said. “Men go garbed thus in your country?”
    “Yes,” said Ted, smiling back.
    “Well,” said Fence, “to the West Tower we must go, all the same, and find somewhat more suited to a farm.”
    The warm, cinnamon-scented air of the West Tower enclosed them comfortingly. Late sunlight blazed in through its nine windows, some gold as it ought to be, and some a violent pink reflection off the outer walls of High Castle. The room was piled and heaped and hung with clothes, most even less suited to a farm in Australia—or anywhere else—than Fence’s robe.
    Fence seemed to know his way about, and quickly found a plain muslin shirt. But they could not locate anything resembling trousers. Ted, appealed to, said firmly that a shirt and hose would be even odder than the starry robe.
    Laura remembered suddenly that, if it were June in Illinois, it would be winter in Australia, and that even in the twentieth century some people wore cloaks in winter. Fence received this information dubiously, but said he’d as lief swelter in a cloak as rummage here any further. They found a black cloak for Fence, and a red one for Laura, who remembered Claudia and wished it were any other color, and a green one for Ted, and went down to the stables, where the grooms had looked at them oddly but consented to pack the garments into saddlebags and saddle two horses.
    “Why not three?” said Fence.
    “Laura can ride with me,” said Ted, climbing onto Edward’s horse. “Can you give her a boost?”
    Fence did as he was asked, but looked at Laura once she was safely behind Ted. “Wherefore this unaccustomed shyness?”
    “I hate horses,” said Laura, with violence. She hated horses, and Princess Laura loved them, and it was an enormous relief to be able to tell the truth for once.
    Fence’s face closed up like a brand-new paperback. Maybe, she thought, they should just keep on playing their parts.
    The day was cooling into evening as they rode away from High Castle. The distant eastern sky was piled with little round clouds, and above that was an improbable dark blue. It was too early for stars. Three crows flapped slowly over their heads, and some little bird whistled and