Immediately, the boy, who was looking at him with the kind curiosity one gives to the chatter of the feeble-minded, replied:
"I took it from Ho-Ho, who found it when we were herding goats near San Hozai last spring. Ho-Ho said it was 'money.' Aren't you hungry, Grandfather?"
The old man tightened his grip on his stick and walked faster along the road, his eyes flashing with greed.
"I hope Hair-Lip has found a crab... or two," he muttered. "Crabs are good food, very tasty indeed, especially when you have lost your teeth and have grandchildren who love Grandfather and are eager to catch crabs for him." When I was a boy…"
But what Edwin saw suddenly stopped him, and he tightened his bowstring on an arrow he had placed in it. He had stopped at the edge of a crack in the wall. In this place, an old drain had been filled in, and, since the water current was no longer held back, a passage had been cut through the fill. On the opposite side, the end of a rod hung, rusty among the vines that covered it. Beyond, a rabbit crouched beside a bush and looked at it hesitantly, trembling. The distance between them was a full fifty feet, but the arrow had been shot swiftly and hit the target. The pierced rabbit struggled with great difficulty to get away and hide in the grass, shrieking with terror and pain. The boy himself appeared as a flash of brown skin and flying fur as he leapt down the steep wall of the gap and climbed up the other side. His movements were graceful and dexterous, thanks to his small, slender muscles that looked like steel springs. After a hundred feet, in a tangled clump of undergrowth, he accosted the wounded creature, knocked its head against a convenient tree trunk, and gave it to Grandfather to carry.