garden, and I know you don't go there.'

'My cousin Chua, the rat, told me----' said Chuchundra, and then he
stopped.

'Told you what?'

'H'sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua
in the garden.'

'I didn't--so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or I'll bite you!'

Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers.
'I am a very poor man,' he sobbed. 'I never had spirit enough to run
out into the middle of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything.
Can't you _hear_, Rikki-tikki?'

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought
he could just catch the faintest _scratch-scratch_ in the world,--a
noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane,--the dry
scratch of a snake's scales on brickwork.

'That's Nag or Nagaina,' he said to himself; 'and he's crawling into
the bath-room sluice. You're right, Chuchundra; I should have talked
to Chua.'

He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and
then to Teddy's mother's bath-room. At the bottom of the smooth
plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the
bath-water, and as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the