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Show I wot not the bird at all. . . ." "Marry, if that be the trouble, I can point the devil out to ye " "But it be thy mission, if it please thee," said Dr'Igor with some asperity, and raising his voice. "I will not touch i t . . ." Then a shout issued from somewhere outside the mine entrance, and Erica appeared at the half-open door. "Thought I indeed that I heard thy voice, Igor," she said severely. Then she looked with surprise at Hoqqam, half hidden in the shadows. "We are packing on the instant to fly back to the Hold," she said with a telling look at her partner. "Thou said indeed that ye wished to go back to the Hold...?" "Aye, aye," answered Dr'Igor hastily. "I will come help, within the half hour- " "We are leaving at first light on the morrow," Erica went on, not moving an inch and eyeing Hoqqam suspiciously. Has Igor gotten himself tangled up with schemes again? she thought. "Aye," said Dr'Igor; resigned, for his partner had ever been a stubborn and willful woman. "I will come with thee now." He started to leave. • Hoqqam pulled at the man's sleeve. He had been thinking rapidly about possibilities, going over his store of charms and amulets most carefully, and decided that his eye charm would surely ward off any evil with which the DragonGoose could visit him. For he was determined to salvage something from this quartet of aborted insurrections! "I will snare the bird myself," he whispered to Dr'Igor in a rush. "Know I well the wight who plays the pipe. He will draw the creature over toward us, and I will rope his blessed legs " 356 |