By this time the Earth King was nearly discouraged. He did not know what in the world to do. He rested his elbow on his knee and his great head in his hand and thought and wondered. Then once again he rose and took the great brush and wrote the same big words on the sky. And for very weariness he lay down on a great bank of clouds and soon was sound asleep. As he slept, the cloud grew bigger and bigger and blacker and blacker, and the thunder came nearer and nearer until, all at once, CRASH-CRASH—the cloud seemed torn to pieces and the King leaped to his feet half-scared to death, even if he was a King. There before him, darting this way and that way, and up and down, and across-ways, was a swarm of little red-hot creatures that hissed and buzzed and cracked like the Fourth of July.
"Who are you?" he asked in half-fright as he rubbed his eyes, "and what do you want?"
"Messengers, messengers, messengers," whispered they all at once, "and we have come to serve the King."
"What are your names?"
"We are the Lightning Spirits; sometimes men call us Electricity—
The swiftest creatures that are known to men,
To carry your messages, a million times ten."
The King charged them gravely and solemnly, as he had done the winds and the birds before them, that his messengers must be true and faithful and must keep his secrets. But no matter how great the task nor how heavy the oaths with which he bound them to be faithful, they were eager, all of them, to serve the King. Only he must build road-ways for them. They had not wings to fly, and their feet were not accustomed to the highways of the land. They might lose their way. So the King decided to try them. He called his laborers and ordered them to erect tall poles, and from pole to pole to lay slender roadways of wire. Miles and miles of these roadways he built, over the hills and through the valleys. And when all was complete, he called the spirits to him and whispered to them his secret messages. Quick as thought they ran over the little roadways, hither and thither, and back again, doing faithfully and well the King's errands and keeping the King's secrets. They whispered never so much as a word of them. So the Earth King called a great assembly, and before them all appointed the Lightning Spirits to be his trusted messengers for ever and a day.
Of course the winds were very jealous when they heard of it, and they determined to get revenge by stealing the messages from the spirits. They dashed against the wires day after day, trying to break them and get the secrets, but all to no purpose. All they could hear was MUM-MUM-MUM-M-M; and the harder they blew, the louder they heard it.
The birds had all along been sorry that they had given away the great secret, and had been hoping that the King would give them another chance. They were much too gentle to do as the winds did. But they were very curious to find out what the King's messages were. So day after day they went to the wires and sat upon them and snuggled down as close to them as they could get and listened hard, putting now the right ear down and now the left—but all they could ever hear was MUM-MUM-MUM-M-M-M-M.
And they seem never to have got over that habit! If you want to find out for yourself the truth of this tale, you go some day when the wind is blowing against the wires and the birds are sitting upon them, snuggled close, and put your ear to a telegraph pole and all you will hear is MUM-MUM-MUM-M-M-M.