The Three Mulla-mulgars

Book Excerpt: ...y wind bore Tishnar on its wings. And even at night he'd rise up in the darkness and open the door and listen as if out of the immeasurable and solitudinous forests he heard voices calling him from far away. At length, in his last shirt (which had been carefully kept these thirteen years, with a dead kingfisher and a bag of civet, to keep off the cockroaches); in his finest red jacket and his cap of Mamasul-skin; with a great bundle of Manaka-cake and Ummuz-cane, knife and fire-striker and physic, and the old Portingal's rusty musket on his shoulder, he was ready to be off. In the early morning he came stooping under the little hut-door. He looked at his hut and his water-spring, at his bees and canes; he looked at his three sons, and at old Mutta-matutta, with a great frown, and trembled. And Mutta could not bear to say good-bye; she lifted her crooked hands above her old head, the tears running down her cheeks, and she went and hid herself in the hut till he was gone. But his three sons went a little way wi...