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Show 70 with round drops of moisture hanging heavy on the leaves and then falling onto our heads and our clothes. I was not uncomfortable, but instead felt as though the wetness was washing me clean from my wretchedness and shame of the two days before. "Cities are stinking places," Gast said without preface, "full of the sour smell of human bodies and wastes. If I had to live within walls I would sicken." "Everyone has to live inside walls," I commented, "except farmers and shepherds, and even they go home at night." "Not everyone, friend," Gast said. "There are many people in this world who live under the roof of the sky or within the shelter of trees. That is the way man was intended to live, the way my people...." He broke off then, as though he had revealed more than he intended. I was about to ask who his people were but the warning look he gave me made the words die in my throat. We came to a round, deep pool which was fed by a narrow silent stream. All around it feathery ferns uncurled their pointed tongues through the fallen pine needles which carpeted the ground. The forest was so thick that branches of trees intertwined above our heads. "The womb of the earth," Gast said. He knelt to drink, and I followed him. Then he took from his waistband a cloth which he unwrapped to reveal two small meat pies, one for each of us. We ate sitting close to each other with our backs against the same tree trunk. All my doubts about him had vanished, and with them the guilt and unworthiness I had been feeling about myself. It was |