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the Synod of Guardians had been the supreme organ of delegated authority; at other periods this place had been occupied (“usurped,” if one preferred) by the Assembled Lords. The sharpness of these historical dividing-eras was blurred by the often ages when the two had struggled for superiority without either quite gaining. The present governance of Tarnis was based upon a balanced and perpetual truce between them, a truce complicated in typical Tarnisi fashion by the fact of each body containing members who were also members of the other. The Tarnisi themselves accepted this, but not without a sense of its peculiarity — typified, perhaps, by the famous story of the young man who — facing a parental summons to account for reported wrongdoing — urgently inquired of his mother, “Advise me, for my life! is my august father being a Lord or a Guardian today? so that I may know what to say to him!”
    That young Lord Tilionoth was among the informal gathering at Greenglades, when everyone was concerned with matters affecting the interest of the Guardians, was no surprise either to him or to the others. It was the season of the Former Equinox and green was being worn: leaf-green, grass-green, sea-green, sky-green, grain-green, insect-green; sunset-, dark-, and feather-green. Tilionoth had removed his robe of vine-green and stood in under-costume of the same hue, a hundred marks from the great triangular target, the figure which had once delineated a stag-Volanth prancing with club in hand now faded to a dim outline on which only the five vital spots — throat, heart, belly, and the arteries of the right and left groins — still stood out brightly and retouched. The young Lord moved up and down on his toes and swung his arms. His Pemathi handed him the spear-thrower and he held it with his right arm and placed it athwart his right shoulder. Next he took the target spear, examined it, hefted and tossed it several times, catching it with his left hand. Then he stepped back to the line and set the shaft in the thrower so that the butt end rested securely in the pocket prepared for it at the end of the throwing-stick.
    Several of the older men leaned upon their T-staves and watched with detached interest.
    “Stands well … .”
    “Yes. None of those ropy muscles, you know. Ah — ”
    “Well tossed! Well thrown! Neatly in the left!”
    “Glad to see that his fondness for foreign toys hasn’t made Tilionoth forgetful of the classical sports.”
    “Ah — ! Neatly in the throat! Well tossed!”
    “What foreign toys are those, Guardian?”
    “Oh … .” The gray-haired Guardian waved his hand downslope. “You know. The river, there, for instance. Skimming and darting like water-bugs, hundreds of them. You can’t have missed them.”
    “Yes, yes. Those tiny power craft, the one-man ones? I’ve been tempted to try, but I’ve got too much belly on me to lie flat, and then, you know, all that spray in the face, I … . Neatly in the right!”
    “Well tossed!”
    The few women present waved their hands so that their jewelled bangles tinkled Like tiny bells. The air smelled of fresh-cut grass and of the aromatic sawdust sprinkled at the line where Lord Tilionoth stood, now swinging the thrower in his right hand to limber it and the arm and shoulder muscles. He glanced at one of the women and smiled.
    “There’s been quite a fashion for foreign toys of late, it seems to me. It won’t result in any turning away from any of the ancient ways, not just in sport, one must hope. Ah — ! Ah — ! Neatly and well!”
    The gray-haired Guardian placed two fingers before his lips in the Tarnisi negative. “Oh, no fear of that, no fear. One of the returned men, son of an exile, Tonorosant — have you met him? You will, one must hope — he has sort of taken up these foreign toys as a hobby. And, well, one does know that none of us born in the land are ever so anxious for the ancient ways as a returned exile. Which is