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caught sufficient, but they were far out in the marshes. Gair did not think he was enjoying himself any more. He was tired out and slower than ever. Gest debated waiting for night and decided it would be too much for Gair. He trusted to the long white grasses to hide them and they turned back.
    In the middle of the morning, they met a party of Giants.
    Gair could not think what was going on. The ground seemed to be quivering. Agitated birds went whirling up all around him, but he was suddenly quite alone. There was not a soul, not a dog, in sight. All he could see was grass.
    Gest looked between the grasses and saw Gair standing in full view, directly in the path of the Giants. Cursing, he leaped up, threw himself on Gair and rolled with him into the damp bushes beside the nearest dike.
    â€œWhat—?” Gair said loudly. Gest pushed his face into the ground.
    The booming voice of a Giant said, “What was that? It looked like an animal.” It sounded alarmed.
    â€œRabbit,” suggested another thunderous voice.
    â€œToo big,” rumbled another. “More like a badger. Let’s see if we can catch it.”
    Three or four of the Giants rushed trampling along the edge of the dike. They had thick sticks, and they jabbed about with them, shouting. The bushes whipped about. The ground shook. Gair lay with most of Gest on top of him, most uncomfortable and utterly terrified. If he moved his face round in the peaty earth, he could see pieces of the bank falling off into the dike. If he screwed round the other way and squinted, he saw twigs wildly shaking. Once, an enormous blurred foot came heavily down beyond the twigs. Gair winced. The size of the body above that foot must have been horrendous.
    Luckily, the Giants had mistaken the place where Gest and Gair were lying. After crashing about for five minutes or so, they became bored and took themselves off, laughing and rumbling, away along the dike. Eventually, the bank ceased to quake. Gest moved cautiously. Gair bobbed up from underneath, red and indignant with terror.
    â€œThose were Giants! Why didn’t you kill them?”
    Gest wondered how to explain that the only thing to do with Giants was to leave them alone. “There are far more Giants than people,” he said. “If we harmed a Giant, they’d kill everybody on the Moor. Get up.”
    Gair realized he had said something stupid. That, and the thought of hundreds of huge Giants, so depressed him that tears began to trickle down his face.
    Gest picked him up and carried him the rest of the way home. As they went, he went on trying to explain about Giants. “They’re stronger than we are, Gair, and they have a great deal of magic, which makes them very dangerous. And they steal children. If they’d seen you standing there, they’d have taken you away with them. I know. They stole a little girl from Islaw.”
    â€œWhy?” said Gair. He was growing sleepy and demanding with jerking about in his father’s warm arms.
    â€œThey seem to think they can bring children up better,” Gest explained.
    â€œTell them they can’t,” Gair suggested.
    Gest sighed and explained, several times, that one had nothing to do with Giants. Nothing. “And certainly not with the Giants near here,” he said. “You see—well— they’re under a curse. It makes them even more dangerous.”
    â€œWhy?” said Gair, and fell asleep before Gest answered. He slept the rest of the way back and did not wake until Gest dumped him into Miri’s arms. Gest wondered if Gair would remember anything he had said. He rather thought not. But he was wrong. Gair, though he did not talk about them, thought about Giants often. What puzzled him particularly was the uneasy, almost guilty, way his father had talked about a curse. But he did not ask to go hunting again.
    In fact, there was more than enough to do in and around Garholt. Children picked fruit,