sharply to them always the same words: "That is not business." He knew
that he could not make them better thieves during a two-days' journey,
and whatever doubts he had he interfered no further.

From the shoulder of Mluna they dropped into the clouds, and from the
clouds to the forest, to whose native beasts, as well the three
thieves knew, all flesh was meat, whether it were the flesh of fish or
man. There the thieves drew idolatrously from their pockets each one a
separate god and prayed for protection in the unfortunate wood, and
hoped therefrom for a threefold chance of escape, since if anything
should eat one of them it were certain to eat them all, and they
confided that the corollary might be true and all should escape if one
did. Whether one of these gods was propitious and awake, or whether
all of the three, or whether it was chance that brought them through
the forest unmouthed by detestable beasts, none knoweth; but certainly
neither the emissaries of the god that most they feared, nor the wrath
of the topical god of that ominous place, brought their doom to the
three adventurers there or then. And so it was that they came to
Rumbly Heath, in the heart of the Dubious Land, whose stormy hillocks
were the ground-swell and the after-wash of the earthquake lulled for
a while. Something so huge that it seemed unfair to man that it should
move so softly stalked splendidly by them, and only so barely did they
escape its notice that one word ran and echoed through their three
imaginations--"If--if--if." And when this danger was at last gone by
they moved cautiously on again and presently saw the little harmless
mipt, half fairy and half gnome, giving shrill, contented squeaks on
the edge of the world. And they edged away unseen, for they said that
the inquisitiveness of the mipt had become fabulous, and that,
harmless as he was, he had a bad way with secrets; yet they probably
loathed the way that he nuzzles dead white bones, and would not admit