He had been away a good many days, but the boys in the street were still on the watch for him. He told them how he had saved the city from the earth-quake; and they beat him from the city gate to his father’s door. He told his own father how he had saved the city; and his father beat him from his own door to the city gate. Nobody believed him.
He lay outside the town walls till it was dark, all smarting with his aches and pains; then, when nobody could see him, he got up and very miserably made his way back to the cave on the hill. And all the way he said to himself, “Shall I put fire under the Cockatrice once more, and make him shake the town into ruins? Would not that be fine?”
Inside, the cave was quite still and cold, and when he laid his hand on the Cockatrice he could not feel any stir or warmth in its bones. Yet when he called, the Cockatrice just opened a slit of his green eye and looked at him with trust and affection.
“Dear Cockatrice,” cried Beppo, “forgive me for all the wrong I have done you!” And as he clambered his way toward the green light, a great tear rolled from under the heavy lid and flowed past him like a cataract.
“Dear Cockatrice,” cried Beppo again, when he stood on the margin of the green lake, “take me to sleep with you in the land where the Cockatrices are at play, and keep quite still with your tail!”
Slowly and painfully the Cockatrice opened his eye enough to let Beppo slip through; and Beppo saw the green world with its playful cockatrices waiting to welcome him. Then the great eyelid shut down fast, and the waking days of the Cockatrice were over. And Beppo’s native town lay safe, because he had learned from the Cockatrice to be patient and gentle, and had gone to be king of a green world where everything was harmless.
THE RAT-CATCHER’S DAUGHTER
Once upon a time there lived an old rat-catcher who had a daughter, the most beautiful girl that had ever been born. Their home was a dirty little cabin; but they were not so poor as they seemed, for every night the rat-catcher took the rats he had cleared out of one house and let them go at the door of another, so that on the morrow he might be sure of a fresh job.
His rats got quite to know him, and would run to him when he called; people thought him the most wonderful rat-catcher, and could not make out how it was that a rat remained within reach of his operations.