But Red-Eye, seeing how Live-Strong was being pampered, was amazed, and he said to the counselors and to the king himself: "Dear me! These counselors are a pack of fools, and you, too, sir. I cannot think otherwise. Then there is the saying:
I played the fool at first; then he
Who had me on his tether;
And then the king and counselor—
We all were fools together."
"How was that?" they asked. And Red-Eye told the story of
THE BIRD WITH GOLDEN DUNG
There was once a great tree on a mountain side. On it lived a bird in whose dung gold appeared.
One day a hunter came to the spot, and directly in front of him the bird dropped its dung, which at the moment of falling turned to gold. At this the hunter was amazed.
"Well, well!" said he. "For eighty years, man and boy, I have had bird-trapping on the brain, and I never once saw gold in a bird's dung." So he set a snare in the tree. And the bird, fool that he was, forgot the danger, and perched on the customary spot. Of course, he was caught immediately.
Then the hunter freed him from the snare, put him in a cage and took him home. But he reflected: "What am I to do with this bird of ill omen? If anybody should ever discover his peculiarity, it would be
