As I wandered without plan I saw nothing to indicate that I was approaching a better section such as I felt might contain the palace of a jong. The houses were all low and grimy and unlovely in design.

I saw a man standing at the intersection of two streets, and as I came close to him I stopped. He looked at me with his glassy eyes.

"I am lost," I said.

"We are all lost," he replied, his dead tongue thick in his dead mouth.

"I cannot find the house where I live."

"Go into any house; what difference does it make?"

"I want to find my own house," I insisted.

"Go and find it then. How should I know where it is if you do not?"

"It is near the house of the jong," I told him.

"Then go to the house of the jong," he suggested surlily.