came to raise the Queen's army. In midsummer Four of the men of Sandry broughtback the news that he was wounded and was lying in the care of the Queen's ownphysician. They told of his great valor in battle, and told of their ownprowess too, and how they had won the war. Since then there had been no news. With him now in the channelboat were the three companions who hadstayed with him, and a physician sent by the Queen, an, assistant to her owndoctor. This man, an active, slender person in his forties, cramped by thelong night's travel, was quick to leap ashore when the boat slid silently upalong the stone quay of Sandry Farm. While the boatmen and the others busied themselves making the boat fast and lifting the stretcher and its burden upfrom the boat to the quay, the doctor went on up to the house. Approaching theisland, as the sky imperceptibly lightened from night-blue to colorlesspallor, he had seen the spires of windmills, the crowns of trees, and theroofs of the house, all in black silhouette, standing very high after themiles of endlessly level reedbeds and water channels. "Hello, the people!" hecalled out as he entered the courtyard. "Wake up! Sandry has come home!" The kitchen was astir already. Lights sprang up elsewhere in the big house.The doctor heard voices, doors. A stableboy came vaulting out of the loftwhere he had slept, a dog barked and barked its tardy warning, people began tocome out of the house door. As the stretcher was borne into the courtyard, theFarmwife came hurrying out, wrapped in a green cloak that hid her night dress,her hair loose, her feet bare on the stones. She ran to the stretcher as theyset it down. "Farre, Farre," she said, kneeling, bending over the stillfigure. No one spoke or moved in that moment. "He is dead," she said in awhisper, drawing back. "He is alive," the doctor said. And the oldest of thelitterbearers, Pask the saddler, said in his rumbling bass, "He lives,Makalidem. But the wound was deep." The doctor looked with pity and respectat the Farmwife, at her bare feet and her clear, bewildered eyes. "Dema," hesaid, "let us bring him in to the warmth." "Yes, yes," she said, rising andrunning ahead to prepare. When the stretcher bearers came out again, half thepeople of Sandry were in the courtyard waiting to hear their news. Most of allthey looked to old Pask when he came out, and he looked at them all. He was abig, slow man, girthed like an oak, with a stiff face set in deep lines. "Willhe live?" a woman ventured. Pask continued looking them all over until hechose to speak. "We'll plant him," he said. "Ah, ah!" the woman cried, and agroan and sigh went among them all. "And our grandchildren's children willknow his name," said Dyadi, Pask's wife, bossoming through the crowd to herhusband. "Hello, old man." "Hello, old woman," Pask said. They eyed eachother from an equal height. "Still walking, are you?" she said. "How else get back where I belong?" Pask said. His mouth was too set in a straight lineto smile, but his eyes glinted a little. "Took your time doing it. Come on,old man. You must be perishing." They strode off side by side toward the lanethat led to the saddlery and paddocks. The courtyard buzzed on, all inlow-voiced groups around the other two returned men, getting and giving thenews of the wars, the city, the marsh isles, the farm. Indoors, in thebeautiful high shadowy room where Farre now lay in the bed still warm from hiswife's sleep, the physician stood by the bedside, as grave, intent, careful asthe polesman had stood in the stern of the channelboat. He watched the woundedman, his fingers on the pulse. The room was perfectly still. The woman stood at the foot of the bed, and presently he turned to her and gave a quiet nodthat said, Very well, as well as can be expected. "He seems scarcely tobreathe," she whispered. Her eyes looked large in her face knotted andclenched with anxiety. "He's breathing," the escort assured her. "Slow anddeep. Dema, my name is Hamid, assistant to the Queen's physician, Dr. Saker.Her majesty and the Doctor, who had your husband in his care, desired me tocome with him and stay here as long as I am needed, to give what care Ican. Her majesty charged me to tell you that she is grateful for hissacrifice, that she honors his courage in her service. She will do what may bedone to prove that gratitude and to show that honor. And still she bade metell you that whatever may be done will fall short of his due." "Thank you,"

said the Farmwife, perhaps only partly understanding, gazing only at the set,still face on the pillow. She was trembling a little. "You're cold, dema,"Hamid said gently and respectfully. "You should get dressed." "Is he warm enough? Was he chilled, in the boat? I can have the fire laid--" "No. He's warm enough. It's you I speak of, dema." She glanced at him a little wildly,as if seeing him that moment. "Yes," she said. "Thank you." "I'll come back in a little while," he said, laid his hand on his heart, and quietly went out,closing the massive door behind him. He went across to the kitchen wing anddemanded food and drink for a starving man, a thirsty man leg-cramped fromcrouching in a damned boat all night. He was not shy, and was used to theauthority of his calling. It had been a long journey overland from the city,and then poling through the marshes, with Broad Isle the only hospitable placeto stop among the endless channels, and the sun beating down all day, and thenthe long dreamlike discomfort of the night. He made much of his hunger andtravail to amuse his hosts and to divert them, too, from asking questionsabout how the Husbandman did and would do. He did not want to tell them 'more than the man's wife knew. But they, discreet or knowing or respectful, askedno direct questions of him. Though their concern for Farre was plain, theyasked only, by various indirections, if he was sure to live, and seemedsatisfied by that assurance. In some faces Hamid thought he saw a glimpse ofsomething beyond satisfaction: a brooding acceptance in one; an almostconniving intelligence in another. One young fellow blurted out, "Then will hebe--" and shut his mouth, under the joined stares of five or six older people.They were a trapmouthed lot, the Sandry Islanders. All that were not activelyyoung looked old: seamed,weather beaten, brown skin wrinkled and silvery,hands gnarled, hair thick, coarse, and dry. Only their eyes were quick,observant. And some of them had eyes of an unusual color, like amber; Pask,his wife Dyadi, and several others, as well as Farre himself. The first timeHamid had seen Farre, before the coma deepened, he had been struck by thestrong features and those light, clear eyes. They all spoke a strong dialect,but Hamid had grown up not far inland from the marshes, and anyhow had an earfor dialects. By the end of his large and satisfying breakfast he wasglottal-stopping with the best of them. He returned to the great bedroom witha well-loaded tray. As he bad expected, the Farmwife, dressed and shod, wassitting close beside the bed, her hand lying lightly on her husband's hand.She looked up at Hamid politely but as an intruder: please be quiet, don'tinterrupt us, make him be well and go away... . Hamid had no particular eyefor beauty in women, perhaps having seen beauty too often at too short adistance, where it dissolves; but he responded to a woman's health, to thefirm sweet flesh, the quiver and vigor of full life. And she was fully alive.She was as tender and powerful as a red-deer doe, as unconsciously splendid.He wondered if there were fawns, and then saw the child standing behind herchair. The room, its shutters closed, was all shadow with a spatter anddappling of broken light across the islands of heavy furniture, the footboardof the bed, the folds of the coverlet, the child's face and dark eyes. "Hamiddem," the Farmwife said--despite her absorption in her husbandshe had caught his name, then, with the desperate keen hearing of thesickroom, where every word carries hope or doom--"I still cannot see himbreathe." "Lay your ear against his chest," he said, in a tone deliberatelylouder than her whisper. "You'll hear the heart beat, and feel the lungsexpand. Though slowly, as I said. Dema, I brought this for you. Now you'll sithere, see, at this table. A little more light, a shutter open, so. It won'tdisturb him, not at all. Light is good. You are to sit here and eat breakfast.Along with your daughter, who must be hungry, too." She introduced the child,Idi, a girl of five or six, who clapped her hand on her heart and whispered"Give-you-good-day-dema" all in one glottal-stopped word before she shrankback behind her mother: It is pleasant to be a physician and be obeyed, Hamidreflected, as the Farm-wife and her child, large and little images of eachother in their shirts and full trousers and silken braided hair, sat at thetable where he had put the tray down and meekly ate the breakfast he had