Page:The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said.djvu/122

 years before he had hunted with his companions, and he was then called, not Big Man, but Little Fawn.

And one day—a hundred and a hundred years ago it was—he had gone to chase a deer. The deer fled into a cave. He followed with his hounds and his sword, his trumpet and his missile-ball. He went astray and fell asleep in the Cave. And when he wakened up, his hounds were heaps of dust beside him. He went into the world, and he found that his companions were dead for a hundred and a hundred years and that the men of the earth had become smaller and smaller. In the Cave he left his sword and his trumpet and his missile-ball.

The Cock put his two feet on the ground and shook his red comb from over his left to over his right eye. Then said he, Everyone in the house was friendly to Little Fawn except one person—Murrish the Cook-woman. From the first day he came there were disputes between them. "Big men have big appetites," said she to him the day