t the guilty traitor; the traitor hung his head.
Presently the king said: "Weasel, false and double-tongued weasel, did I
not choose you to be my chiefest and most secret counsellor? Did you not
know everything? Did I not consult you on every occasion, and were you
not promoted to high honour and dignity? And you have repaid me by
plotting against my throne, and against my life; the gnat has told me
everything, and it is of no avail for you to deny it. You double
traitor, false to me and false to those other traitors who met in this
very place to conspire against me. It is true you were not among them in
person, but why were you not among them? Do you suppose that I am to be
deceived for a moment? Wretch that you are. You set them on to plot
against me while you kept out of it with clean paws, that you might
seize the throne so soon as I was slain. Wretch that you are."

Here the weasel could not endure it any longer, but crawling to the foot
of the tree, besought the king with tears in his eyes to do what he
would--to order him to instant execution, but not to reproach him with
these enormities, which cut him to the very soul. But the more he
pleaded, the more angry Kapchack became, and heaped such epithets upon
the crouching wretch, and so bitterly upbraided him that at last the
weasel could bear it no more, but driven as it were into a corner,
turned to bay, and faced the enraged monarch.

He sat up, and looking Kapchack straight in the face, as none but so
hardened a reprobate could have done, he said, in a low but very
distinct voice: "You have no right to say these things to me, any more
than you have to wear the crown! I do not believe you are Kapchack at
all--you are an impostor!"

At these words Kapchack became as pale as death, and could not keep his
perch upon the pollard, but fluttered down to the ground beside the
weasel. He was so overcome that for a moment or two he could not speak.
When he found breath, he turned to the weasel and asked him what he
meant. The weasel, who had now regained his spirits, said boldly enough
that he meant what he said; he did not believe that the king was really
Kapchack.

"But I am Kapchack," said the king, trembling, and not knowing how much
the weasel knew.

In truth the weasel knew very little, but had only shot a bolt at random
from the bow of his suspicions, but he had still a sharper shaft to
shoot, and he said: "You are an impostor, for you told La Schach, who
ha