"I'd like some of that hickory myself."

"Well, now, if that's the way of it, I'd go partners with you. And thanks an awful lot."

"Glad to."

Mrs. Drood came back with three mugs of ale. "I brought one for myself," she said. "Land sakes, it ain't often we get visitors. I'll just sit down while we drink the ale."

"Gib is going to help me with the wood tomorrow," said Drood. "We'll go after that big hickory."

"Hickory is good wood," said Mrs. Drood.

"I am getting me a new ax," said Gib. "The old one is almost worn out. It was one my father gave me."

"Your folks are up near Coon Hollow, so I hear," said Mrs. Drood.

Gib nodded. "Been there for quite a while. Good place to be. Good wood, good fishing, plenty of muskrat, one little slough with a lot of wild rice in it. I think they will stay on."

"You're getting your new ax from the gnomes?" asked Drood.

"That's right," said Gib. "Had to wait awhile. Spoke to them about it way last summer."

"Fine workmen, them gnomes," said Drood judiciously. "Good iron, too. That vein they're working is high-grade ore. Pack trains stop every now and then and take everything they have. Good reputation, no trouble selling it. I sometimes wonder. You hear terrible things of gnomes, and maybe they are sort of scaly things. But these gnomes of ours are all right. I don't know how we'd get along without them. They been here for years, as long as anyone can remember."

"Things can get along together," said Mrs. Drood, "if they have good hearts."

"The gnomes ain't people, Mother," Drood reminded her.

"Well, I don't care," said Mrs. Drood. "They're creatures, and they ain't so much different from us. In a lot of ways they are less different from us than we are from humans. The Hill People are a lot like us."

"The main thing," said Drood, "is that all of us manage to get along together. Take us and humans. Humans are twice as big as we are and they have smooth skins where we have fur. Humans can write and we can't. Humans have money and we don't. We trade for what we want. Humans got lots of things we haven't, but we don't begrudge them it and they don't look down on us. Just so long as we get along together, everything's all right."