Eye to eye and head to head,(Keep the measure, Nag.) This shall end when one is dead;(At thy pleasure, Nag.) Turn for turn and twist for twist--(Run and hide thee, Nag.) Hah!
"One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday and Nag ate him."
Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail.
Nag knew that too and, at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid.
So he waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala
Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink deepest.
So saying, he trotted off on the student's
nag, and left the poor fellow to gather wisdom till somebody should come and let him down.
There were three
nags and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon their hams, which I very much wondered at; but wondered more to see the rest employed in domestic business; these seemed but ordinary cattle.
That wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop!
A wretched nag like that pulling such a cartload," said another.
But the poor boy, beside himself, made his way, screaming, through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed the lips.
But now, strange to say, in the shafts of such a cart he saw a thin little sorrel beast, one of those peasants' nags which he had often seen straining their utmost under a heavy load of wood or hay, especially when the wheels were stuck in the mud or in a rut.
Along the roads around the chateau came a few grave personages mounted on mules or country
nags. These were rural neighbors, cures and bailiffs of adjacent estates.