anala, the Nameless?" he scoffed softly, "that a
Mulla-mulgar should heed her yapping (uggagugga)?"

"Ah," said the old hare, "he boasts best who boasts in safety. Mishcha,
little Mulgar, has met the Nameless face to face, and when I hear her
hunting-cry I do not make merry. How could she all these days have given
ear to the Oomgar's gun in the forest, and make no sign--she who has for
her servants leopards and Jaccatrays of many years' hunting? Mark this,
too," said Mishcha, "if the little Mulgar were not the chosen of
Tishnar, his Oomgar would long ago have been nothing but a few picked
bones."

The old hare touched him with her long-clawed foot, and gazed earnestly
into his face with her half-blind, whitening eyes. "Yes, Mulgar," she
said at last, whispering, "your brothers that rode on the little Horses
of Tishnar are none so far away. 'Why,' say they to each other, roosting
half-frozen in their tree-huts--'why does Ummanodda betray all
Munza-mulgar to the Oomgar's gun? He is no child of Royal Seelem's
now.'"

Nod's heart stood still to hear again of his brothers, and that they
were so near. And Mishcha promised if he would abandon the Oomgar, she
would lead him to them. Nod gazed long into the gloom before he sadly
answered:

"I cannot leave my master," he said, "who has fed and befriended me. I
cannot leave him to be torn in pieces by this Beast of Shadows. He is
wise--oh, he is wise! He was born to stand upright. He fears not any
shadow. He walks with N[=o][=o]mas beneath every tree. He kills, old
Mishcha--that I know well--and feeds like a glutton on flesh. But a
she-leopard in one moon eats as many of the Munza-mulgars as she has
roses on her skin. As for the Nameless, my father Seelem told me many a
time of _her_ thirsty tongue."

Then Mishcha whispered warily in Nod's ear in the shadow of the
thorn-bush beneath which they sat, turning her staring stone-coloured
eyes this way, that way. "If the Oomgar were safe from her," she said,
scarcely opening her thin lips above the lean curved teeth, "would
_then_ the little Mulgar go?"

Nod laughed. "Then would I go on all fours, O Mishcha, for I am weary of
waiting and being far from my brothers, Thumb and Thimble. Then would I
go at once if I could leave the Oomgar quietly to his hunting, and safe
from this Shadow-beast and from more than three lean hunting leopards on
the Ollaconda boughs at one time."

Then Mishcha told him what he should do. And Nod liste