aste for supper,
and, seeing now that her sister was past fighting, and only too eager to
leave the Mulgar to his lone, her mate slunk off without more ado to her
own lair, to feast on the morning's bones of a frost-bitten Mullabruk.

But Thimble, though he had worsted the leopards, hadn't much liking or
stomach for nights as wild as this. Thumb's nightmares were sweet peace
to it. All the next day he wandered about, not heeding whither his
footsteps led him. And so it came about that just before evening he
stumbled upon the very same valley he had left in his sulks the morning
before. There, indeed, sat Nod, fast asleep in the evening light for
sheer weariness of watching for his brothers, who, some faint hope had
told him, would return.

As for Thumb, after limping on up the valley a little more than a
league, he soon grew ashamed and sick at heart at having so easily
become a silly child again. He sat down under a great boulder, humped
round with ants' nests, too desolate to go on, too proud to turn back.
All that day and the next he sat moodily watching these never-idle
little creatures, that, afraid of nothing, are feared of all. They had
tunnelled and walled, and wherever sunbeams fell had cast back the snow
that hung above the galleries. And all day long they kept going and
coming, carrying syrup and eggs and meat, and all this with endless
palaver of their waving horns, as if there were nothing else that side
of Arakkaboa but the business of their city. Thumb alive they paid no
heed to, but Thumb dead they would have picked to the bare bones before
sunset.

The next evening Thumb's better head overcame him, and back he went to
his brothers, sitting miserable and forlorn in the new moonlight beneath
their shelter. Nothing was said. They dared scarcely look into each
other's faces awhile, until Thumb caught Nod's bright, anxious little
eyes glancing under his puckered forehead from brother to brother, in
mortal fear they would soon be breaking out again. And Nod looked so
queer, and small, and anxious, and loving, and all these things so much
at once, that Thumb burst out into a roar of laughter. And there they
sat all three, rocking to and fro, holding their sides beneath the
gigantic steeps of Arakkaboa, happy and at peace together again, while
tears ran down their nose-troughs, with their shouts on shouts of
laughter.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV

Next day the travellers were a