in his bundles into the Portingal's chest--three
shirts of cotton; two red jackets, like his own, with metal hooks; a
sheep's-coat, with ivory buttons and pocket-flaps; three skin shoes (for
one had been lost out of his bundle in the forest); a cap of Mamasul
skin (very precious); besides knives, fire-strikers, a hollow cup of
ivory, magic physic-powder, two combs of Impaleena-horn, a green
serpent-skin for sweetening water, etc., and, beyond and above all, the
milk-white Wonderstone of Tishnar.

Here they lived, Seelem and Mutta (as he called her), in the Portingal's
old hut, for thirteen years. And Mutta was happy with Seelem and her
three sons, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod. They had a water-spring,
honey-boxes or baskets for the bees in the Ollaconda-trees, a shed or
huddle of green branches, for Glint, and a big patch of Ummuz-cane. Nod
slept in a kind of hole or burrow in the roof, with a tiny peeping-hole,
from which he used to scare the birds from his father's Ummuz.

Mutta wished only that Seelem was not quite so grim and broody; that the
Munza-mulgars (forest-monkeys) would not come stealing her Subbub and
honey; and that the Portingal's hut stood quite out of the silvery
moon-mist that rose from the swamp; for she suffered (as do most
fruit-monkeys) from the bones-ache. Seelem was gentle and easy in his
own moody way with Mutta and his three sons, but, most of all, he
cheered his heart with tiny Nod, the Nizza-neela. Sometimes all day long
this old travel-worn Mulla-mulgar never uttered a sound, save at
evening, when he sang or droned his evening hymn to Tishnar.[1] He kept
a thick stick, which he called his Guzza, to punish his three sons when
they were idle and sullen, or gluttonous, or with Munza tricks pestered
their mother. And he never favoured Nod beyond the others more than all
good fathers favour the youngest, the littlest, and the gaysomest of
their children.

[1] Tishnar is a very ancient word in Munza, and means that
which cannot be thought about in words, or told, or
expressed. So all the wonderful, secret, and quiet world
beyond the Mulgars' lives is Tishnar--wind and stars, too,
the sea and the endless unknown. But here it is only the
Beautiful One of the Mountains that is meant. So beautiful
is she that a Mulgar who dreams even of one of her Maidens,
and wakes still in the presence of his dream, can no longer
be happy in the com