s, blown away to every quarter.

The vast horde of barbarians were the more pleased with the liberty
accorded to them, because they had spent so ill a night while the gale
raged through their camp. So soon as the sun began to gleam through the
retreating clouds, they went forth in small parties, many of which the
keeper saw go over him while lying helpless by the dead oak-tree.

King Kapchack, after the owl had informed him of the bewildering maze of
treason with which he was surrounded, moped, as has been said before,
upon his perch. In the morning, wet and draggled from the storm, his
feathers out of place, and without the spirit to arrange them, he seemed
to have grown twenty years older in one night, so pitiable did he
appear. Nor did the glowing sun, which filled all other hearts with joy,
reach his gloomy soul. He saw no resource; no enterprise suggested
itself to him; all was dark at noonday.

An ominous accident which had befallen the aged apple-tree in which his
palace stood contributed to this depression of mind. The gale had
cracked a very large bough, which, having shown signs of weakness, had
for many years been supported by a prop carefully put up by the farmer.
But whether the prop in course of time had decayed at the line where the
air and earth exercise their corroding influence upon wood; or whether
the bough had stiffened with age, and could not swing easily to the
wind; or whether, as seems most likely, the event occurred at that
juncture in order to indicate the course of fate, it is certain that the
huge bough was torn partly away from the trunk, leaving a gaping cavity.

Kapchack viewed the injury to the tree, which had so long sustained his
family and fortune, with the utmost concern; it seemed an omen of
approaching destruction so plain and unmistakable that he could not look
at it; he turned his mournful gaze in the opposite direction. The day
passed slowly, as slowly as it did to the keeper lying beneath the oak,
and the king, though he would have resented intrusion with the sharpest
language, noticed with an increasing sense of wrong that the court was
deserted, and with one exception none called to pay their respects.

The exception was Eric, the favourite missel-thrush, who alone of all
the birds was allowed to frequent the same orchard. The missel-thrush,
loyal to the last, came, but seeing Kapchack's condition, did not
endeavour to enter into conversation. As for the rest, they did not