At this he laughed, indeed we laughed together,—­there seemed something ridiculous in the thought; and presently he told me, for the mere relief of talking, that round each of these pit-mouths there was a band to entrap every passer-by who allowed himself to be caught, and send him down below to work in the mine.  ’Once there, there is no telling when you may get free,’ he said; ’one time or other most people have a taste of it.  You don’t know what hard labor is if you have never been there.  I had a spell once.  There is neither air nor light; your blood boils in your veins from the fervent heat; you are never allowed to rest.  You are put in every kind of contortion to get at it, your limbs twisted, and your muscles strained.’

‘For what?’ I said.

‘For gold!’ he cried with a flash in his eyes—­’gold!  There it is inexhaustible; however hard you may work, there is always more, and more!’

‘And to whom does all that belong?’ I said.  ’To whoever is strong enough to get hold and keep possession,—­sometimes one, sometimes another.  The only thing you are sure of is that it will never be you.’

Why not I as well as another? was the thought that went through my mind, and my new companion spied it with a shriek of derision.

‘It is not for you nor your kind,’ he cried.  ’How do you think you could force other people to serve you?  Can you terrify them or hurt them, or give them anything?  You have not learned yet who are the masters here.’

This troubled me, for it was true.  ‘I had begun to think,’ I said, ’that there was no authority at all,—­for every man seems to do as he pleases; you ride over one, and knock another down, or you seize a living man and cut him to pieces’—­I shuddered as I thought of it—­’and there is nobody to interfere.’

‘Who should interfere?’ he said.  ’Why shouldn’t every man amuse himself as he can?  But yet for all that we’ve got our masters,’ he cried with a scowl, waving his clinched fist in the direction of the mines; ’you’ll find it out when you get there.’

It was a long time after this before I ventured to move, for here it seemed to me that for the moment I was safe,—­outside the city, yet not within reach of the dangers of that intermediate space which grew clearer before me as my eyes became accustomed to the lurid threatening afternoon light.  One after another the fugitives came flying past me,—­people who had escaped from the armed bands whom I could now see on the watch near the pit’s mouth.  I could see too the tactics of these bands,—­how they retired, veiling the lights and the opening, when a greater number than usual of travellers appeared on the way, and then suddenly widening out, throwing out flanking lines, surrounded and drew in the unwary.  I could even hear the cries with which their victims disappeared over the opening which seemed to go down into the bowels of the earth.  By and by there came flying towards me a wretch more dreadful in aspect