came to a famine,
that they would have been disarmed and their discontent turned to
gratitude; but he ordered in his rage and terror that they should be
decimated, and let loose the whole army of his hawks upon them, so that
the slaughter was awful to behold, and the ground was strewn with their
torn and mangled bodies. Yet they remained faithful to Choo Hoo, and not
one traitor was found among these loyal barbarians.

"But Choo Hoo, deeply distressed in mind, said that he would relieve
them from the burden of his presence rather than thus be the cause of
their sorrow. He therefore left those provinces and flew out of the
country, leaving word behind him that he would never return till he had
seen the raven, and recovered from him those ancient prophecies that had
so long been lost. He flew away, and disappeared in the distance; the
days and weeks passed, but he did not return, and at last Kapchack,
relieved of his apprehensions, recalled his murderous troops, and the
pigeons were left in peace to lament their Choo Hoo.

"A twelvemonth passed, and still Choo Hoo did not come; the people said
he had been called to the happy Forest of the Heroes, and averred that
sometimes they heard his voice calling to them when no one was near.
There was no doubt that he had gone with the raven. The raven, you must
know, my dear Sir Bevis, was once the principal judge and arbiter of
justice amongst us, so much so that he was above kings, and it is
certain that had he been here we should not have had to submit to the
sanguinary tyranny of Kapchack, nor condemned to witness the scandalous
behaviour of his court, or the still greater scandal of his own private
life. But for some reason the raven mysteriously left this country about
a hundred years ago, leaving behind him certain prophecies, some of
which no doubt you have heard, especially that upon his return there
will be no more famine, nor frost, nor slaughter, nor conflict, but we
shall all live together in peace.

"However that may be, the raven has never come back; the learned hold
that he must have died long since, for he was so aged when he went away
no one knew his years, hinting in their disbelief that he went away to
die, and so surround his death with a halo of mystery; but the common
people are quite of a different opinion, and strenuously uphold the
belief that he will some day return. Well, as I told you, a twelvemonth
went by, and Choo Hoo did not come, when suddenly in