head he wore a crown. I
cannot tell you what the crown was made of, but I am quite certain that
it was still more splendid than all the rest. As to his voice I can
say nothing about that, for the bird never sang at all. In fact, he did
nothing but gaze steadily at the King, and as he gazed, the King felt
his strength come back to him. In a little while the bird flew into the
room, still with his eyes fixed on the King, and at every glance the
strength of the sick man became greater, till he was once more as well
as he used to be before the Queen died. Filled with joy at his cure,
he tried to seize the bird to whom he owed it all, but, swifter than a
swallow, it managed to avoid him. In vain he described the bird to
his attendants, who rushed at his first call; in vain they sought the
wonderful creature both on horse and foot, and summoned the fowlers to
their aid: the bird could nowhere be found. The love the people bore
King Peridor was so strong, and the reward he promised was so large,
that in the twinkling of an eye every man, woman, and child had fled
into the fields, and the towns were quite empty.

All this bustle, however, ended in nothing but confusion, and, what
was worse, the King soon fell back into the same condition as he was in
before. Prince Saphir, who loved his father very dearly, was so unhappy
at this that he persuaded himself that he might succeed where the others
had failed, and at once prepared himself for a more distant search.
In spite of the opposition he met with, he rode away, followed by his
household, trusting to chance to help him. He had formed no plan, and
there was no reason that he should choose one path more than another.
His only idea was to make straight for those spots which were the
favourite haunts of birds. But in vain he examined all the hedges and
all the thickets; in vain he questioned everyone he met along the road.
The more he sought the less he found.

At last he came to one of the largest forests in all the world, composed
entirely of cedars. But in spite of the deep shadows cast by the
wide-spreading branches of the trees, the grass underneath was soft and
green, and covered with the rarest flowers. It seemed to Saphir that
this was exactly the place where the birds would choose to live, and
he determined not to quit the wood until he had examined it from end to
end. And he did more. He ordered some nets to be prepared and painted of
the same colours as the bird's plum