so scared since....No, I've never been that scared, and I don't mind admitting it." "Me, either. My father thinks I was jumping at shadows under the trees." Mat nodded glumly and leaned back against the cart wheel. "So does my da. I told Dav, and Elam Dowtry. They've been watching like hawks ever since, but they haven't seen anything. Now Elam thinks I was trying to trick him. Dav thinks he's down from Taren Ferry -- a sheepstealer, or a chickenthief. A chickenthief!" He lapsed into affronted silence. It's probably all foolishness anyway," Rand said finally. "Maybe he is just a sheepstealer." He tried to picture it, but it was like picturing a wolf taking the cat's place in front of a mouse hole. "Well, I didn't like the way he looked at me. And neither did you, not if how you jumped at me is any guide. We ought to tell someone." "We already have, Mat, both of us, and we weren't believed. Can you imagine trying to convince Master al'Vere about this fellow, without him seeing him? He'd send us off to Nynaeve to see if we were sick." "There are two of us, now. Nobody could believe we both imagined it." Rand rubbed the top of his head briskly, wondering what to say. Mat was something of a byword around the village. Few people had escaped his pranks. Now his name came up whenever a washline dropped the laundry in the drift or a loose saddle girth