et; nine ephelantoes' tusks; a bag of Margarita stones; and many
other things, besides cloth and spider-silk and dried-up fruits and
fishes. He made his dwelling there, and died there. This Mulgar, Zebbah,
was Mutta-matutta's great-great-great-grandfather. Dead and gone were
all.

Now, one day when Mutta-matutta was young, and her father had gone into
the forest for Sudd-fruit, there came limping along a most singular
Mulgar towards the house. He was bent and shrunken, shivering and
coughing, but he walked as men walk, his nut-shaped head bending up out
of a big red jacket. His shoulder and the top of his head were worn bare
by the rubbing of the bundle he carried. And behind him came stumbling
along another Mulgar, his servant, with a few rags tied round his body,
who could not at first speak, his tongue was so much swollen from his
having bitten in the dark a poison-spider in his nuts. The name of his
master was Seelem; his own name was Glint. This Seelem fell very sick.
Mutta-matutta nursed him night and day, with the sourest monkey-physic.
He was pulled crooked with pain and the shivers, or rain-fever. The tips
of the hairs on his head had in his wanderings turned snow-white. But he
bore his pain and his sickness (and his physic) without one groan of
complaint.

And Glint, who fetched water and gathered sticks and nuts, and
helped Mutta-matutta, told her that his master, Seelem, was a
Mulla-mulgar--that is, a Mulgar of the Blood Royal--and own brother
to Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar.

He told her, also, that his master had wearied of Assasimmon's
valley-palace, his fine food and dishes, his music of shells and
strings, his countless Mulgar-slaves, beasts, and groves and gardens;
and that, having chosen three servants, Jacca, Glutt, and himself, he
had left his brother's valleys, to discover what lay beyond the
Arakkaboa Mountains. But Jacca had perished of frost-bite on the
southern slopes of the Peak of Tishnar, and Glutt had been eaten by the
Minimuls.

He was very silent and gloomy, this Mulla-mulgar, Seelem, but glad to
rest his bruised and weary bones in the hut. And when Mutta-matutta's
father died from sleeping in the moon-mist at Sudd-ripening, Seelem
untied his travelling bundle and made his home in the hut. Mutta-matutta
was a lonely and rather sad Mulgar, so at this she rejoiced, for she had
grown from fearing to love the royal old wanderer. And she helped him to
put away all that was