d
the sleep of Lithuanians and Tartars. The snake rode on a black horse, a
black falcon perched on his head, and a black hound followed him. The
horse stumbled, the falcon clamored, the hound howled.

Then said the snake: "My steed, why do you stumble? my hound, why do you
howl? and, my falcon, why do you clamor? For these three doings foresay
some ill to me."

"Oh, a great ill!" replies Manuel, with his charmed sword already half
out of the scabbard.

But Niafer cried: "An endless ill is foresaid by these doings. For I
have been to the Island of the Oaks: and under the twelfth oak was a
copper casket, and in the casket was a purple duck, and in the duck was
an egg: and in the egg, O Norka, was and is your death."

"It is true that my death is in such an egg," said the Serpent of the
East, "but nobody will ever find that egg, and therefore I am resistless
and immortal."

"To the contrary, the egg, as you can perceive, is in my hand; and when
I break this egg you will die, and it is smaller worms than you that
will be thanking me for their supper this night."

The serpent looked at the poised egg, and he trembled and writhed so
that his black scales scattered everywhither scintillations of reflected
sunlight. He cried, "Give me the egg, and I will permit you two to
ascend unmolested, to a more terrible destruction."

Niafer was not eager to do this, but Manuel thought it best, and so at
last Niafer consented to the bargain, for the sake of the serpent's
children. Then the two lads went upward, while the serpent bandaged the
eyes of his horse and of his hound, and hooded his falcon, and crept
gingerly away to hide the egg in an unmentionable place.

"But how in the devil," says Manuel, "did you manage to come by that
invaluable egg?"

"It is a quite ordinary duck egg, Manuel. But the Serpent of the East
has no way of discovering the fact unless he breaks the egg: and that is
the one thing the serpent will never do, because he thinks it is the
magic egg which contains his death."

"Come, Niafer, you are not handsome to look at, but you are far cleverer
than I thought you!"

Now, as Manuel clapped Niafer on the shoulder, the forest beside the
roadway was agitated, and the underbrush crackled, and the tall
beech-trees crashed and snapped and tumbled helter-skelter. The crust of
the earth was thus broken through by the Serpent of the North. Only the
head and throat of this design of Miramon's was lifted from the