ed it with twitching fingers. He
glanced over it with bright blue glittering eyes at his little
hunched-up friend.

"Don't you have no shadow of fear, my son. If they come, come they must.
Just you skip off into the forest with your courage where your tail
ought to be. I care not a pinch of powder for them or'nery beasts. It's
that there Shadowlegs that beats me with his mewling. I've heard it down
on the coast; I've heard it with the Portingals; I've heard it with the
Andalambandoes; I've heard it wake and sleep. But witch-beast or no
witch-beast, and every skulk-by-night that creeps on claws, I'll win
home yet!" He kicked a few loose smoking logs into the blaze. "More
fire, my son! I like a light to fight by when fighting comes."

The darkness was clear as glass. The sky seemed shaken as if with
fire-flies. Not a sound stirred now, not even a hovering wing. Nod
heaped high the huge fire, and followed the Oomgar into his hut.

But not to sleep. He crouched on his snug dry bed of moss, and waited
patiently till Battle's snores rose slow and mournful beneath the
snow-piled roof. Then very quickly he put on his sheep's-coat over his
Juzanda jacket and breeches. He crawled out, and lifted down with both
hands the heavy bar of the door, and stole out into the moonlight again.
He thrust his puckered hand under his jacket, and touched his skinny
breast-bone, beneath which, ever since the little Horse of Tishnar had
toppled him into the snow, he had felt the slumbering Wonderstone
strangely burning. And, as if even Oomgar magic, too, might help him, he
hobbled back into the hut and put Battle's little dog's-eared book into
his pocket. Then, before his heart could fail him, he ran out as fast as
his fours could carry him to where he had heard rise up in the night the
Hunting-Song of Immanala.

On the extreme verge of the steep, opposite Battle's hut, stood a
solitary flat-headed rock beside the frozen stream. Here the water burst
in a blaze of moonlight into a cascade of icicles and foam. Nod stood
there in the rock's shadow awhile, looking down into the forest. And as
if a little cloud had come upon the glittering moon, he felt, as it
were, a sudden darkness above his head, and a cold terror crept over his
skin.

Then he stepped, trembling, out of the shadow of the rock into the
moonlight, and gazed up into the shadowy countenance of Immanala. She
lay gaunt and spare, her long neck touching the snow, her eye-balls
beneat