respects to the hairy gentlemen,
and there's a warm welcome and fresh-picked bones for breakfast. But the
night's creeping cold, and bed's bed, old friend, and Andy's eyes was
never made for moth-hunting. So here goes." He went in with his gun, and
Nod heard him shut and bar the door.

Nod listened awhile, with eyes fixed sorrowfully on the fast-shut door;
then, having heaped more logs on to the fire, he went slowly back to his
brothers.

Now that the moon was down, and night at its darkest, the frost
hardened. And Thumb and Thimble, when they were sure the Oomgar was
asleep in his hut, were glad enough to hobble across the ice and to sit
and warm themselves before the fire. Their jackets hung in tatters.
Thumb's left second toe was frost-bitten, and Thimble's eyes were so
sore from the glaring whiteness of the snow he could only dimly see.
Moreover, they were weary of living and sleeping in their tree-houses
among the scatter-brained Forest-mulgars, and though at first they sat
shaky and sniffing, and started if but a dry leaf snapped in the fire,
they listened in silence to Nod's long story of his doings, and began to
see at last that what he had done by Mishcha's counsel had been for the
best, and not for his own sake only.

"But we cannot stay here, Ummanodda," said Thumb. "We could not rub
noses with the Oomgar. His voice, his smell! He is not of our kind,
little brother. And now that all the peoples of Munza-mulgar are our
enemies, we must press on, with no more idling and fine eating and
sitting shanks to fire, or we shall never reach the Valleys alive."

"I am ready, Thumb, my brother," Nod answered. "The Oomgar has been kind
to me, his own kind's kind. It was my Tishnar's Wonderstone that saved
him from the teeth of the Nine-and-ninety, and from Immanala's magic,
though why should I tell it is so? Now they will think it is his
skin-bonneted Meermut that stalks to and fro with the ghost-gun of a
ghost. They will forsake this place, every one--claw and talon, upright
and fours, every one. How long shall a flesh-eater, hungry and
gluttonous, live on dried berries and nuts? Me gone; unless the frost
flies soon, or a great Bobberie, as he does say, comes up from that
strange water, the Sea, over yonder, the Oomgar will die. O brothers,
just as that Oomgar, the Portingal, died whose bones dangled over us
when we stood by Mutta's knee and listened to them clicking. Do but let
me stay to say good-bye, and we will