At the nearby village of Tustvold he falls in with a quarryman and antiquarian named Nisbet, whose trade is the construction of columns atop which the idle husbands of the industrious village women bask in the rays of the dying sun. The height of the columns is a status symbol and so the village women vie with each other to have Nisbet erect taller and taller columns for their husbands. With the aid of Nisbet's gravity-repellent boot dressing, Cugel comes up with a scheme whereby he surreptitiously removes the bottom segments of every column in order to resell them to the women. The ruse is discovered and he flees the village before the women can lynch him. (Chapter III.1)
