Translation:The High Mountains/23

“There are four missing!” said Georgios the following day when he had been responsible for the hens. While they were pecking around the trees he'd counted them and only found seven. Where had the others gone? He went down, looked in the bushes and threw some stones about, but no hens came out into the open.

“Come and see over here, Georgios”, cried Dimos who was near the little henhouse. “ Look!” Georgios saw some feathers on the ground and the boards where the hens perched were scattered about.

When the other children round about heard that the hens had disappeared, they ran over to Dimos and Georgios. They saw the henhouse, looked at each other and had the same thought: “It's the fox that's robbed us!”

But whose fault was it? Now they realised their mistake. In a forest where foxes and weasels live, they had left their hens to perch in a wide-open henhouse.

—Let's make another one today, they now said. Out of wood with a strong door.

—That won't be enough, said Andreas. We came and settled in the middle of nowhere and without a dog. Now as we have suffered because of it, we see how much we need such a companion.

—Let's find one! cried the children and were suddenly thrilled.

They imagined a dog who would play with them, who would watch over them and be a guard. They immediately began to give him a name, to call him Pisto, Skopo, Flox, as if he were there in front of them.

—If we'd had it yesterday, the three hens and the poor village cock would have survived!

But while they were talking, there was the other cock, the one they had brought with them, coming out of the bushes.

He seemed to say “But you've got a cock! Can't you see me?” And he strutted about like no other. All of the Green Wood, the whole world seemed to belong to him.

—Look, look! cried Christos. There's ours. He's been spared.

The cock stood still for a moment, head held high, and crowed a light “cock-a-doodle-do. He was talking to himself naturally.

Christos and Dimos then began to recite the “song of the cock and the falcon”, and the cock himself stopped to listen to it, as if it was for him:

An all-white cock with a long neck puffs out his chest proudly he wears jewels pretends that the henhouse isn't enough for him. Well, he finds some grain in the middle of the courtyard His head is raised and he announces his arrival to everyone so that we know to the east and to the west. When he turns around at a slow pace “Never seen before, said the hens such a General....” But he thinks to himself : “my dear, you show-off?” Suddenly he sees a falcon Ah! At that moment his pompous strutting is troubled Like an arrow to the henhouse he runs to hide.