"Here go I," said Nod, touching his paw.

"He followed the mountain-paths with my own father," said Ghibba, "and
lived alone for many days in one of our Spanyards,[7] for he was worn
out with travel, and nearly dead from lying down to drink out of a
Quickkul-fish pool. But after five days, while he was still weak, he
rose up at daybreak, crying out in Munza-mulgar he could remain with us
no longer. So my people brought him, as I have brought you, to this
everlasting snow-field, where he said farewell and journeyed on alone."

[7] I suppose, huts or burrowings.

"Had he a gun?" said Nod.

"What is a gun, Nizza-neela?"

"What then--what then?" cried Nod impatiently.

"Two nights afterwards," continued the old Mulgar, "some of my people
came up to the other end of the gorge of the Long-noses. There they
found him, cold and bleeding, in his second sleep. The Long-noses had
pelted him with stones till they were tired. But it was not their stones
that had driven him back. He would not answer when the Men of the
Mountains came whispering, but sat quite still, staring under his black
arches, as if afraid. After two days more he rose up again, crying out
in another voice, like a Moh-mulgar. So we came again with him, two
'ropes' of us, along the walks the traveller knows. And towards evening,
with his bag of nuts and water-bottle, in his rags of Juzana, he left us
once more. Next morning my father and my people came one or two together
to where we sit, and--what did they see?"

"_What_ did they see?" Nod repeated, with frightened eyes.

"They did see only this," said Ghibba: "footsteps--one-two, one-two,
just as the Mulla-mulgar walks--all across the snow beyond the
thorn-trees. But they did see also other footsteps, slipping, sliding,
and here and there a mark as if the traveller had fallen in the snow,
and all these coming _back_ from the thorn-trees. And at the beginning
of the ice-path was a broken bundle of nuts strewn abroad, but uneaten,
and the shreds of a red jacket. Water-bottle there was none, and Mulgar
there was none. We never saw or heard of that Mulgar again."

"O Man of the Mountains," cried Nod, "where, then, is my father now?"

Ghibba stooped down and peered under his bandage close into Nod's small
face. "I believe, Eengenares, your father--if that Mulgar was your
father--is happy and safe now in the Valleys of Tishnar."

"But," said Nod, "he must have come back again out of his wits with fear