xcept the favourite
missel-thrush) enter the orchard, and therefore Kapchack has to hold
these great councils in the copse. What will be the result I cannot
think, and I am not without serious apprehensions myself, for I have
hitherto held undisputed possession of this domain. But Choo Hoo is so
despotic, and has such an immense army at his back, that I am not at all
certain he will respect my neutrality. As for Kapchack, he shivers in
his claws at the very name of the mighty rebel."

"Why does Choo Hoo want King Kapchack's country?" said Bevis. "Why
cannot he stop where he is?"

"There is no reason, dear; but you know that all the birds and animals
would like to be king if they could, and when Choo Hoo found that the
wood-pigeons (for he was nothing but an adventurer at first, without any
title or property except the ancestral ash) were growing so numerous
that the woods would hardly hold them, and were continually being
increased both by their own populousness and by the arrival of fresh
bands, it occurred to him that this enormous horde of people, if they
could only be persuaded to follow him, could easily over-run the entire
country. Hitherto, it was true, they had been easily kept in subjection,
notwithstanding their immense numbers, first, because they had no
leaders among them, nor even any nobles or rich people to govern their
movements and tell them what to do; and next, because they were
barbarians, and totally destitute of art or refinement, knowledge, or
science, neither had they any skill in diplomacy or politics, but were
utterly outside the civilised nations.

"Even their language, as you yourself have heard, is very contracted and
poor, without inflection or expression, being nothing but the repetition
of the same sounds, by which means--that is simply by the number and the
depth of hollowness of the same monosyllables--they convey their wishes
to each other. It is, indeed, wonderful how they can do so, and our
learned men, from this circumstance, have held that the language of the
wood-pigeon is the most difficult to acquire, so much so that it is
scarce possible for one who has not been born among the barbarians to
attain to any facility in the use of these gutturals. This is the reason
why little or no intercourse has ever taken place between us who are
civilised and these hordes; that which has gone on has been entirely
conducted by the aid of interpreters, being those few wood-pigeons who
have co