lattering to the ground.

I could not see him any more, though I could hear him choking and
strangling and coughing. The audience kept a death-like silence. I
crouched on the lip of the entrance and waited. The strangling and
coughing died down, and I could hear him now and again clearing his
throat. A little later he began to climb down. He went very quietly,
pausing every moment or so to stretch his neck or to feel it with his
hand.

At the sight of him descending, the whole horde, with wild screams and
yells, stampeded for the woods. Old Marrow-Bone, hobbling and tottering,
followed behind. Red-Eye took no notice of the flight. When he reached
the ground he skirted the base of the bluff and climbed up and into his
own cave. He did not look around once.

I stared at Lop-Ear, and he stared back. We understood each other.
Immediately, and with great caution and quietness, we began climbing up
the cliff. When we reached the top we looked back. The abiding-place was
deserted, Red-Eye remained in his cave, and the horde had disappeared in
the depths of the forest.

We turned and ran. We dashed across the open spaces and down the slopes
unmindful of possible snakes in the grass, until we reached the woods.
Up into the trees we went, and on and on, swinging our arboreal flight
until we had put miles between us and the caves. And then, and not till
then, in the security of a great fork, we paused, looked at each other,
and began to laugh. We held on to each other, arms and legs, our eyes
streaming tears, our sides aching, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

CHAPTER X

After we had had out our laugh, Lop-Ear and I curved back in our flight
and got breakfast in the blueberry swamp. It was the same swamp to which
I had made my first journeys in the world, years before, accompanied by
my mother. I had seen little of her in the intervening time. Usually,
when she visited the horde at the caves, I was away in the forest. I had
once or twice caught glimpses of the Chatterer in the open space, and
had had the pleasure of making faces at him and angering him from the
mouth of my cave. Beyond such amenities I had left my family severely
alone. I was not much interested in it, and anyway I was doing very well
by myself.

After eating our fill of berries, with two nestfuls of partly hatched
quail-eggs for dessert, Lop-Ear and I wandered circumspectly into the
woods toward the river. Here was where stood my old home-tree