say no more;" then aloud: "Your royal
highness' commands shall be immediately obeyed;" and away he flew, and
gave the Commission the flag of truce.

Choo Hoo, confined in his camp with a murmuring and mutinous soldiery,
short of provisions, and expecting every moment to see the enemy pouring
into his midst, was beyond measure delighted when he heard that peace
was proposed, indeed he could scarcely believe that any one in his
senses could offer such a thing to an army which must inevitably
surrender in a few hours. But when he heard that the fox was the
king-elect, he began to comprehend, for there were not wanting
suspicions that it was the fox who, when Choo Hoo was only a nameless
adventurer, assisted him with advice.

The Commission, therefore, found their task easy enough so far as the
main point was concerned, that there should be peace, but when they came
to discuss the conditions it became a different matter. The fox, a born
diplomat, had instructed them to put forward the hardest conditions
first, and if they could not force these upon Choo Hoo to gradually
slacken them, little by little, till they overcame his reluctance. At
every step they sent couriers to the king-elect with precise information
of their progress.

The negotiations lasted a very long time, quite an hour, during which
the couriers flew incessantly to and fro, and Bevis, lying on his back
on the moss under the oak, tried which could screech the loudest,
himself or the jay. Bevis would easily have won had he been able to
resist the inclination to pull the jay's tail, which made the latter
set up such a yell that everybody started, Bevis shouted with laughter,
and even the fox lost his gravity.

Choo Hoo agreed to everything without much difficulty, except the
indemnity; he drew back at that, declaring it was too many millions, and
there was even some danger of the negotiations being broken off. But the
fox was equally firm, he insisted on it, and even added 10,000 bushels
of grain to the original demand, at which Choo Hoo nearly choked with
indignation. The object of the fox in requiring the grain was to secure
the faithful allegiance of all his lesser subjects, as the sparrows, and
indeed he regarded the indemnity as the most certain means of beginning
his reign at the height of popularity, since it would be distributed
among the nation. People could not, moreover, fail to remark the extreme
disinterestedness of the king, since of all these