“Not if it isn’t safe.”
And at the words, as a signal, came voices from this side and that—speech hurried, excited and tumultuous. It wasn’t safe—what did they know of him and how could they prove his story true? He might be a spy—now he knew where to find them, knew they had food, he might come back and bring others with him! When he tried to speak the voices grew louder, over-shouted him—and one man at his side, gesticulating wildly, cried out that they would be mad to let him go, since they could not tell how much he knew. The phrase was taken up, as it seemed in panic—by man after man and woman after woman—they could not tell how much he knew! They pressed nearer as they shouted, their faces closing in on him—spitting, working mouths and angry eyes. They were handling him almost; and when once they handled him—he knew it—the end would be sure and swift. He dared not move, lest fingers went up to his throat. He dared not even cry out.
It was the old man who saved him with another call for silence. Not out of mercy—there was small mercy in the lined, dirty face—but because, it seemed, there was yet another point to be considered.
“If they came again”—he jerked his head towards the open—“we should be a man the stronger. Now they are stronger than we are—by nearly a dozen. …”
Apparently the argument had weight, for its hearers stood uncertain and arrested—and instinct bade Theodore seize on the moment they had given him. … What he said in the beginning he could not remember—how he caught their attention and held it—but when cooler consciousness returned to him they were listening while he bargained for his life. … He bargained and haggled for the right to live—offering goods and sweat and muscle in exchange for a place on the earth. He was strong and would work for them; he could hunt and fish and dig; he would earn by his labour every mouthful that fell to him, every mouthful that fell to his wife. … More, he had food of his own laid away for the winter months—dried fish and nuts and the store of fruit he had salved and hoarded from the autumn. These all could be fetched and shared if need be. … He bribed them while they haggled with their eyes. Let them come with him—any of them—and prove what he said; he had more than enough—let them come with him. … When he stopped, exhausted and sobbing for breath, the extreme of the danger had passed.
“If he has food,” someone grunted—and Theodore, turning to the unseen speaker, cried out—“I swear I have! I swear it!”
He hoped he had won; and then knew himself in peril again when the man who had raised the cry before repeated doggedly that they could not tell how much he knew. …
“Take him away,” said the old man suddenly. “You take him—you two”—and he pointed twice. “Keep him while we talk—till I send for you.”
At least it was reprieve and Theodore knew himself in safety, if only for a passing moment. For their own comfort, if not for his, his guards escorted him to the fire in the open, where they crouched down, stolid and watchful, Theodore between them—exhausted by emotion and flaccid both in body and mind. … There was a curious relief in the knowledge that he had shot his last bolt and could do nothing more to save himself; that whatever befell him—release or swift death—was a happening beyond his control. No effort more was required of him and all that he could do was to wait.
He waited dumbly, in the end almost drowsily, with his head bent forward on his knees.
XVII
After minutes, or hours, a hand was laid on his shoulder and shook it; he raised his eyes stupidly, saw his guards already on their feet and with them a third man—sent, doubtless, with orders to summon them. He rose, knowing that a decision had been made, one way or another, but still oddly numb and unmoved. … The two men with him thrust a way into the crowded little room, elbowing their fellows aside till they had pushed and dragged their charge to the neighbourhood of the fireplace and set him face to face with his judge. As they fell back a pace or two—as far as the crowding of the room allowed—someone again lit a branch at the fire and held it up that the light might fall upon the prisoner.
To Theodore the action brought with it a conviction that his sentence was death and his manner of receiving it a diversion for the eyes of the beholders. … The old man was waiting, intent, with his chin on his hand, that he might lengthen the diversion by lengthening the suspense of the prisoner. …
When he spoke at last his words were a surprise—instead of a judgment, came a query.
“What were you?” he asked suddenly; and, at the unexpected, irrelevant question, Theodore, still numb, hesitated—then repeated mechanically, “What was I?”
“In the days before the Ruin—what were you? What sort of work did you do? How did you earn your living?”
He knew that, pointless as the question seemed, there was something that mattered behind it; his face was being searched for the truth and the ring of listeners had ceased to jostle and were waiting in silence for the answer.
“I—I was a clerk,” he stammered, bewildered.
“A clerk,” the other repeated—as it seemed to Theodore suspiciously. “There were a great many different kinds of clerks—they did all sorts of things. What did you do?”
“I was a civil servant,” Theodore explained. “A clerk in the Distribution Office—in Whitehall.”
“That means you wrote letters—did accounts?”
“Yes. Wrote letters, principally … and filed them. And drew up reports. …”
The question sent him back through the ages. In the eye of his mind he saw his daily office—the shelves, the rows of files,
