"Two nights afterwards," continued the old Mulgar, "some of my people came up to the other end of the gorge of the Long-noses. There they found him, cold and bleeding, in his second sleep. The Long-noses had pelted him with stones till they were tired. But it was not their stones that had driven him back. He would not answer when the Men of the Mountains came whispering, but sat quite still, staring under his black arches, as if afraid. After two days more he rose up again, crying out in another voice, like a Môh-mulgar. So we came again with him, two 'ropes' of us, along the walks the traveller knows. And towards evening, with his bag of nuts and water-bottle, in his rags of Juzana, he left us once more. Next morning my father and my people came one or two together to where we sit, and—what did they see?"
"What did they see?" Nod repeated, with frightened eyes.
"They did see only this," said Ghibba: "footsteps—one-two, one-two, just as the Mulla-mulgar walks—all across the snow beyond the thorn-trees. But they did see also other footsteps, slipping, sliding, and here and there a mark as if the traveller had fallen in the snow, and all these coming back from the thorn-trees. And at the beginning of the ice-path was a broken bundle of nuts strewn abroad, but uneaten, and the shreds of a red jacket. Water-bottle there was none, and Mulgar there was none. We never saw or heard of that Mulgar again."
"O Man of the Mountains," cried Nod, "where, then, is my father now?"
Ghibba stooped down and peered under his bandage close into Nod's small face. "I believe, Eengenares, your father—if that Mulgar was your father—is happy and safe now in the Valleys of Tishnar."
"But," said Nod, "he must have come back again out of his wits with fear of the Country of Shadows."
"Why," said Ghibba, "a brave Mulgar might come back once, twice, ten times; but while one foot would swing after the other, he might still arise in the morning and try again. 'On, on,' he would say. 'It is better to die, going, than to live, come-back.'"
And Nod comforted himself a little with that. Perhaps he would yet meet his father again, riding on Tishnar's leopard-bridled Zevveras; perhaps—and he twisted his little head over his shoulder—perhaps even now his Meermut haunted near.
"But tell me—tell me this, Mountain-mulgar: What was the fear which drove him back? What feet so light ran after him that they left no imprint in the snow? Whose shadow-hands tore his jacket to pieces?"