for a little food. And the prince or
nobleman must be a very stingy curmudgeon, to be sure, if, at least,
when his own dinner was over, he would not bid them welcome to the
broken victuals from the table.

Pleasing himself with this idea, King Ulysses had made a few steps
in the direction of the palace, when there was a great twittering and
chirping from the branch of a neighboring tree. A moment afterwards, a
bird came flying towards him, and hovered in the air, so as almost to
brush his face with its wings. It was a very pretty little bird, with
purple wings and body, and yellow legs, and a circle of golden feathers
round its neck, and on its head a golden tuft, which looked like a
king's crown in miniature. Ulysses tried to catch the bird. But it
fluttered nimbly out of his reach, still chirping in a piteous tone, as
if it could have told a lamentable story, had it only been gifted with
human language. And when he attempted to drive it away, the bird flew no
farther than the bough of the next tree, and again came fluttering about
his head, with its doleful chirp, as soon as he showed a purpose of
going forward.

"Have you anything to tell me, little bird?" asked Ulysses.

And he was ready to listen attentively to whatever the bird might
communicate; for, at the siege of Troy, and elsewhere, he had known such
odd things to happen, that he would not have considered it much out of
the common run had this little feathered creature talked as plainly as
himself.

"Peep!" said the bird, "peep, peep, pe--weep!" And nothing else would it
say, but only, "Peep, peep, pe--weep!" in a melancholy cadence, and over
and over and over again. As often as Ulysses moved forward, however, the
bird showed the greatest alarm, and did its best to drive him back, with
the anxious flutter of its purple wings. Its unaccountable behavior made
him conclude, at last, that the bird knew of some danger that awaited
him, and which must needs be very terrible, beyond all question, since
it moved even a little fowl to feel compassion for a human being. So
he resolved, for the present, to return to the vessel, and tell his
companions what he had seen.

This appeared to satisfy the bird. As soon as Ulysses turned back, it
ran up the trunk of a tree, and began to pick insects out of the bark
with its long, sharp bill; for it was a kind of woodpecker, you must
know, and had to get its living in the same manner as other birds of
that species. But eve