She had never seen such a savage look on anyone’s face in all her young life. It was as though a newly-hatched thing had taken human form. The shock had made her physically giddy. Little by little she forced herself back to a state of comparative calm. She grew aware that Grandfather’s irascible voice could be heard from within the hovel, ordering Danianel to hurry with her sketching and get out to join the search party under Keefe. Taking a firm grip on herself, she thrust open the door and blurted out her news. “Grandfather, Jasper refuses to report for the search party! He said he wouldn’t admit that I’d found him and told him your instructions unless I—I went with him for an hour first.” Danianel, a slight, quite pretty girl a little older than Nestamay, looked up startled from the eyepiece of the microscope. Several sheets of neatly executed drawings were piled up alongside the instrument. “Go with you?” Grandfather said frostily. “Where to? I suppose I don’t have to ask what for!”
