Thura made no reply. Dingeye sniffed moodily. “All right then, you stop ’ere awhile till yer feelin’ better. I won’t go too fast so that y’can catch up with me.”

Still receiving no reply from his companion, he set off into the forest, traveling south and slightly west, talking aloud to reassure himself. “Must be somethin’ he’s et, greedy ol’ toad. Prob’ly catch me up ter night when ’e gets hungry again.”

*   *   *

The trail of the two stoats was not difficult to follow. Samkim and Arula could see plainly the slashed and damaged vegetation which Dingeye had hacked at with the sword. Despite the urgency of their mission, neither of the two young ones could help noticing the beauty of Mossflower, draped in summer green and studded with small islands of color from flowering bush and shrub. Their paws made little or no sound as they padded along over the carpet of soft brown leaf loam. Samkim pointed ahead to where a strip of bark had been wantonly sliced from the trunk of a white willow, exposing the pale sapped wood beneath.

“Easy to see which way they went. Look at that.”

Arula nodded. “Urr, Foremole’d tan thurr ’ides for doen that to a livin’ tree. Ho urr, they’m surely two nastybeasts.”

Samkim touched the trunk, noting the dampness of sap on his paw. “If we travel a little faster we may catch them up by late afternoon. They can’t be too far ahead. Come on, Arula.”

“No need to worry, young Redwallers, heh heh heh!”

The thin reedy voice had come from nowhere. Samkim and Arula halted, staring at the leafy screen about them.

The voice spoke again. “Worry, hurry, that’s all some creatures do. No time to live to a ripe old age. Look at me—I can’t count the summers I’ve seen and I’m fit as a flea. Heh heh heh!”

Samkim fitted an arrow to his bowstring. “Show yourself!”

A bed of tall ferns stirred and a woodvole stepped into view. He was small and thin, dressed in a long smock of brown barkcloth, and his face was framed by the biggest white beard they had ever beheld on any creature—it fuzzed out like a cloud, and only his bright black eyes were visible through it. The woodvole laughed and cut a little caper. He was astonishingly agile for such an ancient creature.

“Heh heh heh! You can put the bow down. I’m not going to hurt you, Redwaller. How do I know you’re a Redwaller? Easy! You talk with the accent of an Abbeydweller. I’m Furgle the Hermit. I live here all alone—always have done, can’t stand the company of any creature for too long, prefer my own. I suppose you’re tracking the two stoats who came by here earlier?”

“You’m seen ’em then, zurr?”