became beams, so that the clearness of his sight was
gone, and the Seer was like a blind man in the world, and had no
longer any faith in it. He had lost his good opinion of the world,
as well as of himself; and when a man gives up the world, and
himself too, it is all over with him.

"All over," said the wild swan, who flew across the sea to the
east.

"All over," twittered the swallows, who were also flying
eastward towards the Tree of the Sun. It was no good news which they
carried home.

"I think the Seer has been badly served," said the second brother,
"but the Hearer may be more successful."

This one possessed the sense of hearing to a very high degree:
so acute was this sense, that it was said he could hear the grass
grow. He took a fond leave of all at home, and rode away, provided
with good abilities and good intentions. The swallows escorted him,
and he followed the swans till he found himself out in the world,
and far away from home. But he soon discovered that one may have too
much of a good thing. His hearing was too fine. He not only heard
the grass grow, but could hear every man's heart beat, whether in
sorrow or in joy. The whole world was to him like a clockmaker's great
workshop, in which all the clocks were going "tick, tick," and all the
turret clocks striking "ding, dong." It was unbearable. For a long
time his ears endured it, but at last all the noise and tumult
became too much for one man to bear.

There were rascally boys of sixty years old--for years do not
alone make a man--who raised a tumult, which might have made the
Hearer laugh, but for the applause which followed, echoing through
every street and house, and was even heard in country roads. Falsehood
thrust itself forward and played the hypocrite; the bells on the
fool's cap jingled, and declared they were church-bells, and the noise
became so bad for the Hearer that he thrust his fingers into his ears.
Still, he could hear false notes and bad singing, gossip and idle
words, scandal and slander, groaning and moaning, without and
within. "Heaven help us!" He thrust his fingers farther and farther
into his ears, till at last the drums burst. And now he could hear
nothing more of the true, the beautiful, and the good; for his hearing
was to have been the means by which he hoped to acquire his knowledge.
He became silent and suspicious, and at last trusted no one, not
even himself, and no longer hoping to find and bring home the costl