that dog, do please. For your own Christian conscience, let me go.'

    Damp, dirty, and possessed by a sense of unreality that yielded an irritation equal to her captive's, Lynn said, 'Why should I?'

    The little man folded his arms. He puffed out his cheeks, looking at once diffident and crafty. He shuffled his boots, whacked his stick against the walls of his wooden prison, and finally faced her. 'Well,' he conceded. 'There is the wee matter of a wish. You do have me caught, not so fairly, mind! But it's trapped I would be, I suppose, if you slipped your hold on that hound.'

    'And so 1 get a wish?' Lynn suppressed a rise of hysterical laughter. The strain, the surprise, the total weirdness of what was taking place smashed her off balance in a rush. 'I need no wishes granted,' she said tartly, and finished, defiantly flippant, with the thought uppermost in her mind. 'It's Sandy's wish needs the attention.'

    'Ah!' The brown man sighed. He sidled, leaned a shoulder against the stump wall and frowned with a bushy furrow of brows. 'A sick boy, it is, who begs a visit to Arthur's Round Table?' He gave a cranky shrug in reply to Lynn's astounded stare, and his anger swiftly melted to sad compassion. 'You do know, miss, that yon one is soon to die.'

    The grief hit hard and too fast, that even a supernatural figment in the form of a finger-sized man could know and be helpless before incurable disease. Lynn choked back sudden tears.

    The man strove quickly to console her. 'Ah, miss, it's not so very hopeless as all that. Just hard. You ken how it is in this creation. Every living creature must choose its time and its place. Such is the maker's grand way. Your boy, now, Sandy. If he's to have what he desires, somebody's going to have to convince him to change his mind.' The stick moved and slapped boot leather in reproof. 'Somebody being me, no doubt. That's hard work, just for a wish. Hard work.' He pinned her again with dark, restless eyes, his annoyance grown piquant as she opened her mouth, perhaps to ridicule; surely, foolishly to question. Humans did that, would in fact spit on good fortune when, like Grail, it bounded its way through their front door.

    'Be still, now,' snapped the man. 'Let me think! It's my freedom I'm wanting, and yon's a muckle hard course you've set me if I'm going to fix a way to win it!'

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