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 every little while, as it pecked at the bark of the tree, the purple bird bethought itself of some secret sorrow, and repeated its plaintive note of “Peep, peep, pe—­weep!”

On his way to the shore, Ulysses had the good luck to kill a large stag by thrusting his spear into its back.  Taking it on his shoulders (for he was a remarkably strong man), he lugged it along with him, and flung it down before his hungry companions.  I have already hinted to you what gormandizers some of the comrades of King Ulysses were.  From what is related of them, I reckon that their favorite diet was pork, and that they had lived upon it until a good part of their physical substance was swine’s flesh, and their tempers and dispositions were very