he water
was troubled, and besides that the woodman had felled the tree which now
lay across the spring, and the farmer was digging the new watercourse,
so the spring was getting lower every minute. Cock-alu had come quite
too late; there was not a drop left for poor little Hen-alie.

When Cock-alu saw this he was very much disconcerted; he did not know
what to do, he stood a little while considering, and then he set off as
hard as he could go to the squirrel's house to beg a drop of water from
her. But the squirrel lived a long way off in the wood, and thus it was
a considerable time before he got there.

When he reached the squirrel's house, however, nobody was at home. He
knocked and knocked for a long time, and at last he walked in, but they
were all gone out; he peeped therefore into the pantry to see if he
could find the water; there was plenty of hazel-nuts and beech-nuts,
heaps and heaps of them all laid up in store for winter, but no water;
at length he saw the curled-up cherry-leaf, like a water-jug, standing
at the squirrel's bed-side, but it was empty; there was not a single
drop in it.

"This is bad business!" said Cock-alu to himself, and turned to leave
the house. At the squirrel's door he met a woodpecker.

"Woodpecker," says he, "where is the squirrel gone to? I want to beg a
drop of water from the silver-spring for my wife Hen-alie, who has got a
bean in her throat!"

"Lack-a-day!" said the woodpecker, "the old squirrel drank every drop,
and drained the jug into the bargain; he lay sick in bed this morning,
but there was such virtue in the water that he got well as soon as he
drank it; and now he has taken his wife and the little ones out for an
airing; they will not be back till night, I know. But if you will leave
any message with me I will be sure and deliver it, for the squirrel and
I are very neighborly."

"Oh!" groaned Cock-alu; "but what would be the use of leaving a message
if they have no water to give me!"

With that he came down from the old pine tree where the squirrel lived,
set out on his way home again, and came at length out of the Beech-wood,
but it was then getting toward evening.

He came to his own yard. There was the perch on which he and Hen-alie
had so often sat, and there was the bean-straw, and there lay poor
Hen-alie just as he had left her.

"Hen-alie, my little wife," said he, crowing loudly as he came up, that
he might put a cheerful face on the matter, "I have b