“Greetings, Tcharn!” exclaimed the princess, in a pleased and kindly tone.
The dwarf, or Lilliputian, or whatever he might be, advanced to her with marked but somewhat timid respect and touched the fingers of his right hand to the fair brow she bent toward him. Then he retreated a pace and laid his hand upon his heart.
“My Princess is welcome to my forest,” he said in his native tongue.
“Is it near here, then, that you live, my Tcharn?” she enquired.
“Very near, my Princess.”
“But tell us,” I cried, unable to control myself longer, “did you find many of the white pebbles in this cavity, and did you take them all away?”
“Yes,” he answered readily, with a nod of his small head; “I found them and I took them away, and they were many.”
“But why did you take them?” asked the girl, who, without knowing the value to us of the stones, was able to sympathize with us in our bitter disappointment.
Tcharn was thoughtful. He sat upon the stump and for a moment studied the various faces turned toward him.
“Some time ago,” said he, “a white man came to this valley, which our laws forbid the whites to enter. Perhaps he did not know that I rule the forest which is my home—that I am the Master Workman of the Techla nation. Why should he know that? But the white beast was well aware that his race is by us hated and detested”—here he cast a sinister glance at Duncan and myself—“and barred from our domain. He sneaked in like a jackal, hiding himself by day while by night he prowled around upon all fours, gathering from off the ground the pebbles which our master the king has forbidden any man to see or to touch.