Page:Three hundred Aesop's fables (Townshend).djvu/188

182 fields. "Is this," said the Eagle, "the faithful fulfilment of your promise to me?" The Kite replied, "That I might attain to your royal hand, there is nothing that I would not have promised, however much I knew that I must fail in the performance."

Eagle was once captured by a man, who at once clipped his wings, and put him into his poultry yard with the other birds; at which treatment the Eagle was weighed down with grief. Another neighbour having purchased him, suffered his feathers to grow again. The Eagle took flight, and pouncing upon a hare brought it at once as an offering to his benefactor. A Fox, seeing this, exclaimed, "Do not propitiate the favour of this man, but of your former owner, lest he should again hunt for you, and deprive you a second time of your wings."

A who had one only son, fond of martial exercises, had a dream in which he was warned that his son would be killed by a lion. Afraid lest the dream should prove true, he built for his son a pleasant palace, and adorned its walls for his amusement with all kinds of animals of the size of life, among which was the picture of a lion. When the young Prince saw this, his grief at being thus confined burst out afresh, and, standing near the lion, he thus spoke: "O you most detestable of animals? through a lying dream of my father's, which he saw in his sleep, I am shut up on your account in this palace as if I had