"You should beg in the streets before you prostitute your art and make a mockery of me and my school!"

Master Theobald cried.

He reached out his hand to drag Raistlin down from the stump.

"Touch me, sir"-Raistlin spoke with quiet menace "and you will regret it."

Theobald glowered. "Do you dare to threaten-"

"Hey, Little Fella!" Caramon cried, lumbering in between the two. "Toss that pouch over here!"

"Goblin Ball!" shouted the kender. "You're the goblin," he informed Master Theobald and sent the pouch

whizzing over the mage's head.

"This yours, huh, wizard?" Caramon teased, capering and waving the pouch in front of Theobald's face. "Is

it?"

Master Theobald recognized the pouch, clapped his hand to his belt where the pouch should be hanging. Blue

veins popped out on his forehead, his face flushed a deeper red.

"Give that to me, you hooligan!" he cried.

"Down the middle!" yelled the kender, making an end sweep around the Master.

Caramon tossed the pouch. The kender caught it, amidst laughter and cheers from the crowd, who were

finding the game even more entertaining than the magic. Raistlin stood on the stump, coolly watching the

proceedings, a half-smile on his lips.

The kender reached up to throw a long pass back to Caramon when suddenly the pouch was plucked out of the

kender's hand.

"What the-" The kender looked up in astonishment. "I'll take that," said a stern voice.

A tall man in his early twenties, witheyes as blue as Solamnic skies, long hair worn in an old-fashioned single

braid down his back, took hold of the pouch. His face was serious and stern, for he was raised to believe that life

was serious and stern, bound with rules whose rigid iron bars could never be bent or dislodged. Sturm

Brightblade closed the pouch's drawstrings, dusted off the pouch, and handed it, with a formal bow, to the furious

mage.

"Thank you," said Master Theobald stiffly. Snatching back the pouch, he thrust it safely up his long, flowing

sleeve. He cast a baleful gaze at the kender, and then, turning, he coldly regarded Raistlin.

"You will either leave this place or you will leave my school. Which is it to be, young man?"

Raistlin glanced at the wooden bowl. They had quite enough money for the time being, anyway. And in the

future, what the master did not know would not hurt him. Raistlin would simply have to be circumspect.

With an appearance of humility, Raistlin stepped down from the stump.

"I am sorry, Master," said Raistlin contritely. "It won't happen again."

"I should hope not," said Master Theobald stiffly. He departed in a state of high dudgeon that would only

increase upon his return home to find that most of his spell components, to say nothing of his steel pieces, had

disappeared-and not by magic.

The crowd began to drift away, most of them quite satisfied, having seen a show well worth a steel coin or

two. Soon the only people remaining around the stump were Sturm, Caramon, Raistlin, and the kender.

"Ah, Sturm!" Caramon sighed. "You spoiled the fun." "Fun?" Sturm frowned. "That was Raistlin's

schoolmaster you were tormenting, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but-"

"Excuse me," said the kender, shoving his way forward to talk to Raistlin. "Could you pull the rabbit out of

the box again?"

"Raistlin should treat his master with more respect," Sturm was saying.

"Or make the coins come out of my nose?" the kender persisted. "I didn't know I had coins up my nose. You

think I would have sneezed or something. Here, I'll shove this one up there, and-"

Raistlin removed the coin from the kender's hand. "Don't do that. You'll hurt yourself. Besides, this is our

money."

"Is it? You must have dropped it." The kender held out his hand. "How do you do? My name is Tasslehoff

Burrfoot. What's yours?"

Raistlin was prepared to coldly rebuff the kinder-no human in full possession of his sanity, who wanted to