"I think that Cuthbert, if he knew, might be rather pleased. But Ghost, poor thing, he wanted it so badly. He said he had no home…"

"If you listen to him," Duncan said, "he will wring your heart. I'm glad to be shut of him. He was nothing but a pest."

"How about Scratch?" Diane asked. "What will happen to him?"

"He is coming along with us. Conrad invited him."

"I'm glad of that," said Diane. "He and Conrad have gotten to be pals. And that is good. Scratch, despite being a demon, is not too bad a being."

"He saved Conrad's life back there in the clearing," Duncan said. "Conrad is not about to forget such an act as that."

"And Conrad was nice to him back there at the castle," said Diane. "So were you. Everyone else, up to that time, had treated him absolutely rotten."

Meg brought them fish on birch bark platters and squatted down in front of them.

"Don't eat too soon," she warned them. "Let it cool a bit."

"And you?" asked Diane. "What are you going to do now that the adventure's over? Scratch is coming with us."

"Standish House," said Duncan, "could use a resident witch. We've not had one for years."

Meg shook her head. "I've been thinking. I've wanted to talk with you about it. I have no hut, you see; no place at all to live. I have not a thing at all. But Andrew had a cell. Do you suppose he'd mind? I think I know where it is. If not, Snoopy said he'd show me."

"If that is what you want," said Duncan, "I think Andrew might be happy to know that you were there."

"I think," said Meg, "that he might have liked me just a little bit. Back, that first time we met, he took this piece of cheese out of his pocket. It had lint upon it from the pocket and there were teeth marks on it, for he'd been nibbling on it and he gave it to me and he…"

Her voice broke and she could speak no more. She put her hands to her eyes and, swiftly rising, hobbled off into the darkness.

"She was in love with Andrew," Diane said. "Strange, that a witch and hermit…"

"We all were in love with him," said Duncan, "cross-grained as he might have been."

Cross-grained and a soldier of the Lord. A soldier of the Lord to the very last, insisting that he was a soldier of the Lord when he still was a hermit. Rushing to his death as a soldier of the Lord. Andrew and Beauty, Duncan thought—a soldier of the Lord and a little patient burro.

I'll miss them both, he thought.

From far off, faint in a vagrant wind, came the keening of the wailing for the world. Now, Duncan told himself, as the years went on, there'd be less wailing for the world. Still some misery in the world, but with the Horde no longer on the Earth, less and less of it. Less for the she-vultures on the island to wallow in, less for them to smear upon themselves.

Diane set the plate of fish down upon the ground, plucked at Duncan's sleeve.

"Come with me," she said. "I can't do this all alone. I must have you standing by."

He followed her around the fire to where Snoopy sat eating fish. Diane walked to a place in front of him. She held out the naked sword, cradled in her hands.

"This is too precious a blade," she said, "to belong to any human. Would you take it back into the custody of the Little People? Keeping it until there's need of it again."

Snoopy carefully wiped his hands, held them out to take the sword. Tears stood in his eyes.

"You know, then, milady, who it once belonged to?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"Willingly, then," said Snoopy, "we will take it back. We will guard it well and reverence it. Someday it may be there'll be another hand that is worthy to hold it. But no one ever more than yours, milady."

"You will tell the Little People," said Diane, "how much they honored me."

"It was because we trusted you," said Snoopy. "You were not unknown to us. You'll be found at Standish House?"

"Yes," said Diane. "We're leaving in the morning."

"Someday we'll come and visit you," said Snoopy.

"We'll be waiting for you," said Diane. "There'll be cakes and ale. There'll be dancing on the green."

She turned away and went back to Duncan. She took him by the arm. "And now," she said, "I'm ready for tomorrow."

Galactic Chest

Original copyright year: 1956

I had just finished writing the daily Community Chest story, and each day I wrote that story I was sore about it; there were plenty of punks in the office who could have ground out that kind of copy. Even the copy boys could have written it and no one would have known the difference; no one ever read it — except maybe some of the drive chairmen, and I'm not even sure about them reading it.

I had protested to Barnacle Bill about my handling the Community Chest for another year. I had protested loud. I had said: "Now, you know, Barnacle, I been writing that thing for three or four years. I write it with my eyes shut. You ought to get some new blood into it. Give one of the cubs a chance; they can breathe some life into it. Me, I'm all written out on it."

But it didn't do a bit of good. The Barnacle had me down on the assignment book for the Community Chest, and he never changed a thing once he put it in the book.

I wish I knew the real reason for that name of his. I've heard a lot of stories about how it was hung on him, but I don't think there's any truth in them. I think he got it simply from the way he can hang on to a bar.

I had just finished writing the Community Chest story and was sitting there, killing time and hating myself, when along came Jo Ann. Jo Ann was the sob sister on the paper; she got some lousy yarns to write, and that's a somber fact I guess it was because I am of a sympathetic nature, and took pity on her, and let her cry upon my shoulder that we got to know each other so well. By now, of course, we figure we're in love; off and on we talk about getting married, as soon as I snag that foreign correspondent job I've been angling for.

"Hi, kid," I said.

And she says, "Do you know, Mark, what the Barnacle has me down for today?"

"He's finally ferreted out a one-armed paperhanger," I guessed, "and he wants you to do a feature…"

"Its worse than that," she moans. "It's an old lady who is celebrating her one hundredth birthday."

"Maybe," I said, "she will give you a piece of her birthday cake."

"I don't see how even you can joke about a thing like this," Jo Ann told me. "It's positively ghastly."

Just then the Barnacle let out a bellow for me, so I picked up the Community Chest story and went over to the city desk.

Barnacle Bill is up to his elbows in copy; the phone is ringing and he's ignoring it, and for this early in the morning he has worked himself into more than a customary lather. "You remember old Mrs. Clayborne?"

"Sure, she's dead. I wrote the obit on her ten days or so ago."

"Well, I want you to go over to the house and snoop around a bit."

"What for?" I asked. "She hasn't come back, has she?"

"No, but there's some funny business over there. I got a tip that someone might have hurried her a little."

"This time," I told him, "you've outdone yourself. You've been watching too many television thrillers."

"I got it on good authority," he said and turned back to his work.

So I went and got my hat and told myself it was no skin off my nose how I spent the day; I'd get paid just the same!

But I was getting a little fed up with some of the wild-goose chases to which the Barnacle was assigning not only me, but the rest of the staff as well. Sometimes they paid off; usually, they didn't. And when they didn't, Barnacle had the nasty habit of making it appear that the man he had sent out, not he himself, had dreamed up the chase. His "good authority" probably was no more than some casual chatter of someone next to him at the latest bar he'd honored with his cash.