"Quest?" I repeated. "What quest?"
"We each seek a soul which is lost, a sick soul."
I remembered his rage against de Veulle, and caught his meaning.
"Yes, that is true of you, Ta-wan-ne-ars. But there is no soul which I have the right to seek."
"Nevertheless, my brother would find the soul of the maiden and guard it," he insisted. "I have seen."
"But I may not help her," I objected. "She will have none of me."
"O my brother," he answered, "once there was one of my people who loved a maiden. And this maiden's soul was taken away by illness and went to dwell with Ata-ent-sic, the Goddess of Lost Souls, who rules the Land of Lost Souls which is behind the Setting Sun. The warrior was bidden in a dream to seek the maiden's soul, and he journeyed for three months to the Setting Sun, past the Abode of Evil, where dwells Ha-ne-go-ate-geh, the Evil Spirit.
"And when he came to the Land of Souls he found his maiden's soul dancing with the other lost souls in a bark cabin before Ata-ent-sic. And Jous-ke-ha, the grandson of Ata-ent-sic, who was a very old man, brought him a pumpkin which had been hollowed out, and told him to place the maiden's soul within. And he did so. And he returned to his people, and made a feast, and after the feast they raised up the maiden's soul out of the pumpkin shell."
He stopped under a flickering lanthorn, which cast a feeble light before the George.
"Surely, my brother, we shall not have to travel so dreadful a journey to regain the souls which we seek!"