uatta hare staring
drearily into his face with large whitening eyes.

"Sleep," he said, softly blinking into her face.

"Sleep!" snarled the old hare. "You idle Mulgars spend all your days
eating and sleeping!"

Nod shut his eyes again. "Do not begrudge me this, old hare," he said;
"'tis N[=o][=o]manossi's."

"Where did you steal that sheep's-coat, Mulgar? And how came you and the
ugly ones to be riding under my Dragon-tree on the Little Horses of
Tishnar?"

"Why," replied Nod, smiling faintly, "I stole my sheep's-coat from my
mother, who gave it me; and as for 'riding on the Little Horses'--here
I am!"

"Where have you come from? Where are you going to?" asked the old hare,
staring.

"I've come from the Flesh-mounds of the Minimuls, and I think I'm going
to die," said Nod--"that is, if this old Quatta will let me."

The old hare stiffened her long grey ears, and stamped her foot in the
snow. "You mustn't die here," she said. "No Mulgar has ever died here.
This forest belongs to me."

In spite of all his aches and pains, Nod grinned. "Then soon you will
have Nod's little bones to fence it in with," he said.

The old hare eyed him angrily. "If you weren't dying, impudent Mulgar,
I'd teach you better manners."

Nod wriggled closer into his jacket. "Trouble not, Queen of Munza," he
said softly. "I shouldn't have time to use them now." He shut his eyes
again, and all his pain seemed to be floating away in sleep.

The old hare sat up in the snow and listened. "What's amiss in
Munza-mulgar?" she muttered to herself. "First these galloping Horses of
Tishnar, one, two, three; now the angry Z[=o][=o]ts of the Minimuls, and
all coming nearer?" But Nod was far away in sleep now, and numb with
cold.

She tapped his little shrunken cheek with her foot. "Even in your sleep,
Mulgar, you mustn't dream," she said. "None may dream in my forest." But
Nod made no answer even to that. She sat stiff up again, twitching her
lean, long, hairy ears, now this way, now that way. "Foh,
Earth-mulgars!" she said to herself. She stamped in the snow, and
stamped again. And in a minute another old Quatta came louping between
the trees, and sat down beside her.

"Here's an old sheep's-jacket I've found," said the old Queen Quatta,
"with a little Mulgar inside it. Let us carry it home, Sister, or the
Minimuls will steal him for their feast."

The other old Quatta raised her lip over her long curved teeth. "Pull
out the Mulgar first,"