not,â I admitted. âItâs just that Iâve got a powerful urge to see whatâs on the other side of the next hill.â
He evidently took me quite literally. At the time I thought he was a Tolnedran, and Iâve noticed that theyâre all very literal-minded. âNot much on the other side of that hill up ahead but Tol Malin,â he told me.
âTol Malin?â
âItâs a fair-sized town. The people who live there have a puffed-up opinion of themselves. Anybody else wouldnât have bothered with that âTolâ, but they seem to think it makes the place sound important. Iâm going that way myself, and if youâre of a mind, you can ride along. Hop up, boy. Itâs a long way to walk.â
I thought at the time that all Tolnedrans spoke the way he did, but I soon found out that I was wrong. I tarried for a couple of weeks in Tol Malin, and it was there that I first encountered the concept of money. Trust the Tolnedrans to invent money. I found the whole idea fascinating. Here was something small enough to be portable and yet of enormous value. Someone whoâs just stolen a chair or a table or a horse is fairly conspicuous. Money, on the other hand, canât be identified as someone elseâs property once itâs in your pocket.
Unfortunately, Tolnedrans are very possessive about their money, and it was in Tol Malin that I first heard someone shout, âStop, thief!â I left town rather quickly at that point.
I hope you realize that I wouldnât be making such an issue of some of my boyhood habits except for the fact that my daughter can be very tiresome about my occasional relapses. Iâd just like for people to see my side of it for a change. Given my circumstances, did I really have any choice?
Oddly enough, I encountered that same humorous old fellow again about five miles outside Tol Malin. âWell, boy,â he greeted me. âI see that youâre still moving along westward.â
âThere was a little misunderstanding back in Tol Malin,â I replied defensively. âI thought it might be best for me to leave.â
He laughed knowingly, and for some reason his laughter made my whole day seem brighter. He was a very ordinary-looking old fellow with white hair and beard, but his deep blue eyes seemed strangely out of place in his wrinkled face. They were very wise, but they didnât seem to be the eyes of an old man. They also seemed to see right through all my excuses and lame explanations. âWell, hop up again, boy,â he told me. âWe still both seem to be going in the same direction.â
We traveled across the lands of the Tolnedrans for thenext several weeks, moving steadily westward. This was before those people developed their obsession with straight, well-maintained roads, and what we followed were little more than wagon tracks that meandered along the course of least resistance across the meadows.
Like just about everybody else in the world in those days, the Tolnedrans were farmers. There were very few isolated farmsteads out in the countryside, because for the most part the people lived in villages, went out to work their fields each morning, and returned to the villages each night.
We passed one of those villages one morning about the middle of summer, and I saw those farmers trudging out to work. âWouldnât it be easier if theyâd just build their houses out where their fields are?â I asked the old man.
âProbably so,â he agreed, âbut then theyâd be peasants instead of townsmen. A Tolnedran would sooner die than have others think of him as a peasant.â
âThatâs ridiculous,â I objected. âThey spend all day every day grubbing in the dirt, and that means that they are peasants, doesnât it?â
âYes,â he replied calmly, âbut they seem to think that if they live in a village, that makes them