tle's
little book. He held it out in his brown, hairless palm to Ghibba
beneath the thorn. "What think you of that, Mulla-moona?" he said. And
even Ghibba's dim eyes could discern its milk-pale shining. They talked
long together in the shadow of the thorns, while the rest of the skinny
travellers sat silent beside their bundles, coughing and blinking as
they mumbled their mouldy cheese-rind.

Ghibba said that, as Nod was a Nizza-neela, they should venture out
alone together. "I am nothing but a skin of bones--nothing to pick," he
said, "and all but sand-blind, and therefore could not see to be
afraid."

"No, no, no, Mulla-moona," Thumb grunted stubbornly. "If mischief came
to my brother, how could I live on, listening to the chittering of his
mother's Meermut asking me, 'Where is Nod?' Stay here and guard my
brother, Thimbulla, who is too sick and weak to go with us; and if we
neither of us return before morning, deal kindly with him, Mulla-moona,
and have our thanks till you too are come to be a shadow."

So at last it was agreed between them. And Thumb and Nod returned
together to the edge of the wood and peered out once more towards the
phantom-guarded orchards. Nod waited no longer. He wetted his thumb once
more, and rubbed thrice, droning or crooning, and stamping nimbly in the
snow, till suddenly Thumb sprang back clean into the midst of a
thorn-tree in his dismay.

"Ubbe nimba sul ugglourint!" he cried hollowly. For the child stood
there in the snow, shining as if his fur were on fire with silver light.
About his head a wreath of moon-coloured buds like frost-flowers was
set. His shoulders were hung with a robe like spider-silk falling behind
him to his glistening heels. But it was Nod's shrill small laughter that
came out of the shining.

"Follow, oh follow, brother," he said. "I am Fulby, I am Oomgar's
M'keeso; it is a dream; it is a night-shadow; it is Nod Meermut; it is
fires of Tishnar. Hide in my blaze, Thumb Mulgar. And see these Noomas
cringe!"

Thumb grunted, beat once on his chest like a Gunga, and they stepped
boldly out together, first Nod, then black Thumb, into the wide
splendour of the waste. And the Men of the Mountains watched them from
between the spiky branches, with eyes round as the Minimuls', and mouths
ajar, showing in their hair their catlike teeth.

Out into the open snow that borders for leagues the trees of Tishnar's
orchard stepped Nod, with his Wonderstone. And, as he moved a