"I do not understand you, sir!" replied the latter, haughtily. "I have no reason to be ashamed of my name."
"Perhaps not!" said the boy. "And yet I am tolerably sure that Mr. Ger-Falcon is no other than Mr. Chicken Hawkon, and that it was he who tried to carry off my Black Spanish chickens yesterday morning."
"You are right, sir!" said the hawk. "You are quite right! I was starving, and the chickens presented themselves to me wholly in the light of food. May I ask for what purpose you keep chickens, sir?"
"Why, we eat them when they grow up," said Toto; "but—"
"Ah, precisely!" murmured the hawk. "You eat them also. I thought so."
"But we don't steal other people's chickens," said the boy, "we eat our own."
"Precisely!" said the hawk, again. "You eat the tame, confiding creatures who feed from your hand, and stretch their necks trustfully to meet their doom. I, on the contrary, when the pangs of hunger force me to snatch a morsel of food to save me from starvation, snatch it from strangers, not from my friends."
Toto was about to make a hasty reply, but the bear, with a motion of his paw, checked him, and said gravely to the hawk,—
"Come, come! Mr. Falcon, I cannot have any dispute of this kind. There is some truth in what you say, and I have no doubt that emperors and other disreputable people have had a large share in forming the bad habits into which you and all your family have fallen. But those habits must be changed, sir, if you intend to remain in this forest. You must not meddle with Toto's chickens; you must not chase quiet and harmless birds. You must, in short, become a respectable and law-abiding bird, instead of a robber and a murderer."