Tallow ruled the back leaves of the Register on the third morning after the lease had run its term, which was the only sort of morning on which he had ever been able to rule anything. His hand did not shake. It had not shaken since the Foundation’s wage-hall, when he had been a clerk with a stool and a slate and a master who beat the ruling-board with a cane whenever a line came out crooked. The cane was gone now. The board was still in the Ink-room, leaning against the wall beside the lamp, scarred along one edge where somebody long ago had struck it too hard.
He laid the Roll’s pages flat on the table and held down their corners with four pieces of lead that Gaunt had cast for the purpose and objected to. The sheets were old. They had come out of the Register’s back leaves, where they had lain under the clasp for longer than the Hold had been a Hold, and the paper was foxed along its edges and cold to the touch, as if it had been kept in a cellar and never allowed to warm. The first forty-two lines were already written. He had written them himself, in the Ink, one at midwinter and one for each name the Chamber had read in the dark. Below them the ruled space went on, grey and empty, down to the foot of the leaf.
