r seemed to suppose that I, any more
than she, would like to do, or could care about anything except what
must be done. Her love overflowed upon me--not in caresses, but in a
closeness of recognition which I can compare to nothing but the devotion
of a divine animal.

I never told her anything about her mother.

The wood was full of birds, the splendour of whose plumage, while it
took nothing from their song, seemed almost to make up for the lack of
flowers--which, apparently, could not grow without water. Their glorious
feathers being everywhere about in the forest, it came into my heart to
make from them a garment for Lona. While I gathered, and bound them in
overlapping rows, she watched me with evident appreciation of my choice
and arrangement, never asking what I was fashioning, but evidently
waiting expectant the result of my work. In a week or two it was
finished--a long loose mantle, to fasten at the throat and waist, with
openings for the arms.

I rose and put it on her. She rose, took it off, and laid it at my
feet--I imagine from a sense of propriety. I put it again on her
shoulders, and showed her where to put her arms through. She smiled,
looked at the feathers a little and stroked them--again took it off and
laid it down, this time by her side. When she left me, she carried it
with her, and I saw no more of it for some days. At length she came to
me one morning wearing it, and carrying another garment which she had
fashioned similarly, but of the dried leaves of a tough evergreen. It
had the strength almost of leather, and the appearance of scale-armour.
I put it on at once, and we always thereafter wore those garments when
on horseback.

For, on the outskirts of the forest, had appeared one day a troop of
full-grown horses, with which, as they were nowise alarmed at creatures
of a shape so different from their own, I had soon made friends, and two
of the finest I had trained for Lona and myself. Already accustomed to
ride a small one, her delight was great when first she looked down from
the back of an animal of the giant kind; and the horse showed himself
proud of the burden he bore. We exercised them every day until they had
such confidence in us as to obey instantly and fear nothing; after which
we always rode them at parade and on the march.

The undertaking did indeed at times appear to me a foolhardy one,
but the confidence of the woman of Bulika, real or simulated, always
overcame my hesitanc