"Perhaps you should take an apprentice."

Nisbet uttered a short hollow laugh. "It is not all so easy. Boys of the town think of tall columns even before they learn to spit properly. I would prefer the company of a man who knows something of the world. What, by the way, is your own trade?"

Cugel made a deprecatory gesture. "I am not yet settled upon a career. I have worked as worminger and recently I commanded a sea-going vessel."

"That is a post of high prestige!"

"True enough, but the malice of subordinates forced me to vacate the position."

"By way of the mud-flats?"

"Precisely so."

"Such are the ways of the world," said Nisbet. "Still, you have much of your life ahead, with many great deeds to do, while I look back on life with my deeds already done, and none of them greatly significant."

Cugel said: "When the sun goes out, all deeds, significant or not, will be forgotten together."

Nisbet rose to his feet and broached another jug of wine. He refilled the goblets, then returned to his chair. "Two hours of loose philosophizing will never tilt the scale against the worth of one sound belch. For the nonce I am Nisbet the quarryman, with far too many columns to raise and far too much work on order. Sometimes I wish that I too might climb a column and bask away the hours."

The two sat in silence, looking into the flames. Nisbet finally said: "I see that you are tired. No doubt you have had a tedious day." He pulled himself to his feet and pointed. "You may sleep on yonder couch."

In the morning Nisbet and Cugel breakfasted upon griddle-cakes with a conserve of fruits prepared by women of the village; then Nisbet took Cugel out to the quarry. He pointed to his excavation which had opened a great cleft in the side of the mound.

"Old Tustvold was a city of thirteen phases, as you can see with your own eyes. The people of the fourth level built a temple to Miamatta, their Ultimate God of Gods. These ruins supply white-stone to my needs. . . . The sun is aloft. Soon the men from the village will be coming out to use their columns; indeed, here they come now."

The men arrived, by the twos and threes. Cugel watched as they climbed their columns and composed themselves in the sunlight.

In puzzlement Cugel turned to Nisbet. "Why do they sit so diligently on their columns?"

"They absorb a healthful flux from the sunlight," said Nisbet. "The higher the column the more pure and rich is the flux, as well as the prestige of place. The women, especially, are consumed with ambition for the altitude of their husbands. When they bring in the terces for a new segment, they want it at once, and hector me unmercifully until I achieve, the work, and if I must put off one of their rivals, so much the better."