tween the shadow-casting trees.

At this, one of the Minimuls in his fury lifted a dart and flung it at
the old hare. It stuck, quivering, in her shoulder. She turned slowly,
and stared at him through the falling flakes; then, drawing the dart out
with one of her forefeet, she spat on the point, and laid it softly down
in the snow. And so wildly she gazed at them out of her aged and
whitening eyes that the Minimuls fell into a sudden terror of the old
witch-hare, and without another word turned back in silence and scuffled
off in the thick falling snow by the way they had come.

Old Mishcha watched them till they were hidden from sight by the trees
and the clouding snow-flakes; then, muttering a little to herself,
nodding her thin long ears, she, too, turned and hopped off quickly to
her house in the old Dragon-tree.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII

Nod still lay huddled up in his jacket, his small, hairy face all drawn
and grey, his eyes tight-shut and sorrowful beneath their thick black
lashes. Mishcha squatted over him, and put her head down close to his
little body. "He breathes no more, sister, than a moth or an
Immamoosa-bud."

"Let us drag him out of his sheep-skin, and bury him in the snow," said
Moha.

But Mishcha listened more closely still. "I hear his heart beating; I
hear his drowsy blood just come and go. But what is it that, sweeter
than a panther's breath, smells so of Magic? We must not harm the little
Mulgar, sister; he is cunning. A Meermut of Magic would soon return to
plague us." So she wrapped him up still closer in dry leaves and
tree-moss, and opened his mouth to sprinkle a pinch of snow between his
lips.

All that night and the next day Nod slept without stirring. But the
evening after that, when the snow had ceased again, he opened his eyes
and called "Wallah, wallah!" Mishcha hopped off and brought him snow in
a plantain-leaf, and wrapped him up still warmer. But the little dry
herbs and powdered root she put on his tongue he choked at, and could
not swallow. His shoulder burned, he tossed to and fro with eyes
blazing. Now he would start up and shout, "Thumb, Thumb!" then presently
his face would all pucker up with fear, and he would scream, "The fire,
the fire!" and then soon after he would be whispering, "Muzza, muzza,
mutta; kara mutta, mutta!" just as if he were at home again in the
little dried-up Portingal's hut.

Mishcha did all she could to soothe and quieten him. And