_Oho! Oho-ho!_ Slave, bring me my blanket, it grows cold, and my medicine also, that which protects me from the ghosts, who are thick to-night.

Macumazahn brings them, I think.

_Oho-ho!_" I turned to depart but when I had gone a little way Zikali called me back again and said, speaking very low, "When you meet this Umslopogaas, as you will meet him, he who is called the Woodpecker and the Slaughterer, say these words to him, "'A bat has been twittering round the hut of the Opener-of-Roads, and to his ears it squeaked the name of a certain Lousta and the name of a woman called Monazi.

Also it twittered another greater name that may not be uttered, that of an elephant who shakes the earth, and said that this elephant sniffs the air with his trunk and grows angry, and sharpens his tusks to dig a certain Woodpecker out of his hole in a tree that grows near the Witch Mountain.

Say, too, that the Opener-of-Roads thinks that this Woodpecker would be wise to fly north for a while in the company of one who watches by night, lest harm should come to a bird that pecks at the feet of the great and chatters of it in his nest.'" Then Zikali waved his hand and I went, wondering into what plot I had stumbled..