the air, and white spots came
out in every direction: the trees were full of children! In the wildest
merriment they began to descend, some dropping from bough to bough
so rapidly that I could scarce believe they had not fallen. I left my
litter, and was instantly surrounded--a mark for all the artillery of
their jubilant fun. With stately composure the elephants walked away to
bed.

"But," said I, when their uproarious gladness had had scope for a while,
"how is it that I never before heard you sing like the birds? Even when
I thought it must be you, I could hardly believe it!"

"Ah," said one of the wildest, "but we were not birds then! We were
run-creatures, not fly-creatures! We had our hide-places in the bushes
then; but when we came to no-bushes, only trees, we had to build nests!
When we built nests, we grew birds, and when we were birds, we had to do
birds! We asked them to teach us their noises, and they taught us, and
now we are real birds!--Come and see my nest. It's not big enough for
king, but it's big enough for king to see me in it!"

I told him I could not get up a tree without the sun to show me the way;
when he came, I would try.

"Kings seldom have wings!" I added.

"King! king!" cried one, "oo knows none of us hasn't no wings--foolis
feddery tings! Arms and legs is better."

"That is true. I can get up without wings--and carry straws in my mouth
too, to build my nest with!"

"Oo knows!" he answered, and went away sucking his thumb.

A moment after, I heard him calling out of his nest, a great way up a
walnut tree of enormous size,

"Up adain, king! Dood night! I seepy!"

And I heard no more of him till he woke me in the morning.

CHAPTER XXXIII. LONA'S NARRATIVE

I lay down by a tree, and one and one or in little groups, the children
left me and climbed to their nests. They were always so tired at night
and so rested in the morning, that they were equally glad to go to sleep
and to get up again. I, although tired also, lay awake: Lona had not bid
me good night, and I was sure she would come.

I had been struck, the moment I saw her again, with her resemblance to
the princess, and could not doubt her the daughter of whom Adam had
told me; but in Lona the dazzling beauty of Lilith was softened by
childlikeness, and deepened by the sense of motherhood. "She is
occupied probably," I said to myself, "with the child of the woman I met
fleeing!" who, she had already told me, was not h