At midnight Tallow went back to the Foundation Vault with the Ink-lamp, because a clerk checks what he has already counted, and because he had not been able to sleep, and because the cedar box had been empty for two nights and he had still not been able to stop looking at it.
He had moved the Index that afternoon. It was a small book, thin and dark, bound in old brown leather with the Foundation’s two-line seal stamped on its spine, and it had lain beside the Register’s copy in the cedar box for as long as the Hold had kept the copy at all. It held the copy’s numbers, one for each entry, and the page on which each one was written, so that a clerk who wished to find the lease counterpart or the Survey’s Writ or the Oath of Surrender could do so without turning every leaf of the great book. Tallow had taken it up to the Gatehouse that morning to find an entry number for the envoy’s paper, and had brought it back down at dusk, and had set it on the Vault’s lowest shelf beside the grille, where he could see it from the stair. He had not wanted it in the Gatehouse with the board. He had not wanted it in the Vault’s box either, empty and ringing, with the cedar still smelling of Lessaran wax. He had put it on the shelf by the bars, and had told himself that it…
