gods whose spite and vengeance he had most reason to fear. It seems
that it was too late or a prayer too small to placate them, for there
and then the stroke of midwinter came and the eggs hatched out in the
roar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird was gone with her difficult eye
and it was a bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I haven't the heart
to tell you any more.

"'Ere," said Lord Castlenorman some few weeks later to Messrs.
Grosvenor and Campbell, "you aren't 'arf taking your time about those
emeralds."





The Long Porter's Tale

There are things that are known only to the long porter of Tong Tong
Tarrup as he sits and mumbles memories to himself in the little
bastion gateway.

He remembers the war there was in the halls of the gnomes; and how the
fairies came for the opals once, which Tong Tong Tarrup has; and the
way that the giants went through the fields below, he watching from
his gateway: he remembers quests that are even yet a wonder to the
gods. Who dwells in those frozen houses on the high bare brink of the
world not even he has told me, and he is held to be garrulous. Among
the elves, the only living things ever seen moving at that awful
altitude where they quarry turquoise on Earth's highest crag, his name
is a byword for loquacity wherewith they mock the talkative.