III.

THE HOOPOE AND THE CROCODILE.

"Gnulemah!" she answered, laying a finger on the head of her golden
serpent, and uttering the name as though it were of the only woman in
the world.

But the next moment she found time to realize that something
unprecedented had occurred, and her wonder trembled on the brink of
dismay.

"Speaks in my language!" she exclaimed below her breath; "but is not
Hiero."

Until Balder's arrival, then, Hiero would seem to have been the only
talking animal she had known. The singularity of this did not at first
strike the young man. Gnulemah was the arch-wonder; yet she so fully
justified herself as to seem very nature; and by dint of her magic
reality, what else had been wonderful seemed natural. Balder was in
fairy-land.

He fell easily into the fairy-land humor.

"I am a being like yourself," said he, with a smile; "and not dumb
like your plants and animals."

"Understood!--answered!" exclaimed Gnulemah again, in a tremor. As
morning spreads up the sky, did the sweet blood flow outward to warm
her face and neck. As the blush deepened, her eyelids fell, and she
shielded her beautiful embarrassment with her raised hands. A pathos
in the simple grace of this action drew tears unawares to Balder's
eyes.

What was in her mind? what might she be? Had she lived always in this
enchanted spot, companionless (for poor old Hiero could scarcely serve
her turn) and ignorant perhaps that the world held other beings
endowed like herself with human gifts? Had she vainly sought
throughout nature for some kinship more intimate than nature could
yield her, and thus at length fancied herself a unique, independently
created soul, imperial over all things? Since her whole world was
comprised between the wall and the river, no doubt she believed the
reality of things extended no further.

In Balder she had found a creature like, yet pleasingly unlike
herself, palpable to feeling as to sight, and gifted with that
articulate utterance which till now she had accounted her almost
peculiar faculty. Delightful might be the discovery, but awesome too,
frightening her back by its very tendency to draw her forward.

Whether or not this were the solution of Gnulemah's mystery, Balder
recognized quiet to be his cue towards her. Probably he could not do
better than to get the ear of Doctor Hiero, and establish himself upon
a footing more conventional than the present one. His next step
accordingly was to as