into the middle of the room, but he never gets there.

'Don't kill me,' said Chuchundra, almost weeping. 'Rikki-tikki, don't
kill me.'

'Do you think a snake-killer kills musk-rats?' said Rikki-tikki
scornfully.

'Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,' said Chuchundra, more
sorrowfully than ever. 'And how am I to be sure that Nag won't
mistake me for you some dark night?'

'There's not the least danger,' said Rikki-tikki; 'but Nag is in the
garden, and I know you don't go there.'

'My cousin Chua, the rat, told me----' said Chuchundra, and then he
stopped.

'Told you what?'

'H'sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua
in the garden.'

'I didn't--so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I'll bite you!'

Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers.
'I am a very poor man,' he sobbed. 'I never had spirit enough to run
out into the middle of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything.
Can't you _hear_, Rikki-tikki?'

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought
he could just catch the faintest _scratch-scratch_ in the world,--a
noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane,--the dry
scratch of a snake's scales on brickwork.

'That's Nag or Nagaina,' he said to himself; 'and he's crawling into
the bath-room sluice. You're right, Chuchundra; I should have talked
to Chua.'

He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and
then to Teddy's mother's bath-room. At the bottom of the smooth
plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the
bath-water, and as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the
bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside in
the moonlight.

'When the house is emptied of people,' said Nagaina to her husband,
'_he_ will have to go away, and then the garden will be our own
again. Go in quietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait
is the first one to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt
for Rikki-tikki together.'

'But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the
people?' said Nag.

'Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have
any mongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are
king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs
in the melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), our children will
need room and quiet.'

I had not thought