Now a lot of tell-tale-tits had built their nests above the Palace, and some of them flew off and told the Magician how Perihelia was always crying in the yew avenue over the white stone. So he said to his slaves: “Get a hand-cart, and carry the thing on to the middle of the bridge and drop it into the river.” So they did, and the stone stuck, end-up, in the mud; and when the golden argosies of the Magician came up the river, bearing peacocks and apes and turquoises, every single galley split on that stone, and the whole treasure went to the bottom; all but the peacocks, and they flew away into the country of a neighbouring King, who thought every one should be useful and not ornamental; so he cut off the peacocks tails, and clipped their wings, and tried to teach them to lay turkey’s eggs. But it is very difficult to get a peacock to do anything useful.
So then the Magician set a lot of people dredging for the lost treasure; and, among other things, they fished up some poor dead apes and the big white stone, and as the stone seemed to have been rather in the way in the bed of the river, they carted it away to the fields behind the town, where the white
