she said.

But Mishcha said: "No, it is a strange Mulgar, a Mulla-mulgar, a
Nizza-neela, and he smells of magic. Take his legs, Sister, and I will
carry his head. There's no time to be lost." So these two old Quatta
hares wrapped Nod round tight in his sheep-skin coat, and carried him
off between them to their form or house in an enormous hollow
Dragon-tree unimaginably old, and very snug and warm inside, with
cotton-leaf, feathers, and dry tree-moss. There they laid him down, and
pillowed him round. And Mishcha hopped out again to watch and wait for
the Minimuls.

Sheer overhead the pygmy moon stood, when with drums beating and waving
cudgels, in their silvery girdles, leopard-skin hats, and grass shoes,
thirty or forty of the fury Minimuls appeared, hobbling bandily along,
following the hoof-prints of the galloping Zevveras in the snow. But
little clouds in passing had scattered their snow, and the track had
begun to grow faint. The old hare watched these Earth-mulgars draw near
without stirring. Like all the other creatures of Munza-mulgar, she
hated these groping, gluttonous, cannibal gnomes. When they reached the
place where Nod had fallen, the Minimuls stood still and peered and
pointed. In a little while they came scuttling on again, and there sat
old Mishcha under a great thorn-bush, gaunt in the snow.

They stood round her, waving their darts, and squeaking questions. She
watched them without stirring. Their round eyes glittered beneath their
spotted leopard-skin hats as they stood in their shimmering grasses in
the snow.

"When so many squall together," she said at last, "I cannot hear one.
What's your trouble this bright night?"

Then one among them, with a girdle of Mulla-bruk's teeth, bade the rest
be silent.

"See here, old hare," he said; "have any filthy Mulgars passed this way,
one tall and bony, one fat and hairy, and one little and cunning?"

Mishcha stared. "One and one's two, and one's three," she said slowly.
"Yes, truly--three."

"Three, three!" they cried all together--"thieves, thieves!"

Mishcha's face wrinkled. "All Mulgars are thieves," she said; "some even
eat flesh. Ugh!"

At this the Minimul-mulgars grew angry, their glassy eyes brightened.
They raised their snouts in the air and waved their darts. But the old
hare sat calmly under her roof of poisonous thorns.

"Answer us, answer us," they squeaked, "you dumb old Quatta!"

"H'm, h'm!" said Mishcha, staring solemnly. "Mulga