ders where he lay.
Thumb started up out of his sleep, and in an instant the two brothers
were up and at each other, wrestling and kicking, gnashing their teeth,
and guzzling through their throats and noses like mere Gungas,
Mullabruks, or Manquabees. Poor Nod, not knowing what was the cause of
all the trouble, got a much worse drubbing than either, till at last, in
their furious struggling, all three brothers rolled from under the
wattles into the pale glimmering of the stars and snow. For in this
valley after the sun goes moves a phantom light or phosphorescence over
the snow. Brought suddenly to their senses by the chill dark air, the
travellers sat dimly glaring one at another, hunched, bruised, and
breathless. And Nod, seeing his brothers so enraged, and preparing to
fight again, and having had half his senses battered out by their rough
usage, asked what was amiss.

"Ask him, ask him!" broke out Thimble, "the fat and stupid, who deafens
the whole forest with his gluttonous screams."

"'Glutton, glutton!'" shouted Thumb. "How many nights, my brother
Ummanodda, have we lain awake comforting one another that this dismal
grasshopper has only one nose to snore through! I'll teach you,
graffalegs, to break my ribs with a cudgel! Wait till a blink of morning
comes! Oh, grammousie, to think I have put up with such a Mullabruk so
long!" He lifted a frozen hunch of snow and flung it full in Thimble's
face, and soon once more they were scuffling and struggling, cuffing and
kicking in the silence that lay like a cloak upon all the sacred
Valleys of Tishnar. They fought till, broken in wind and strength, they
could fight no more. And Nod was kept busy all the rest of the darkness
of that night mending the wounds of, and trying to make peace with, now
one brother, now the other.

As soon as daybreak began to stir between the hills, Thumb and Thimble
rose up together, and without a word, with puffed and sullen faces, went
off on their fours and began gathering a good store of fruit and
Ukka-nuts, each very cautious of approaching too near the other in his
search. Nod skipped drearily from one to the other, pleading with them
to be friends. But he got only hard words for his pains, and even at
last was accused by both of them of stirring up a quarrel between them
for his own pride and pleasure. He edged sadly back to the huddle, and
sat gloomily watching them, wondering what next they would be at. He was
soon to know, for first