"The prince in a day or two found that the old king was right, and recovered much of his former spirit. As for the old king, having provided for his dynasty, and feeling certain that his royal house would now endure, he feasted and laughed, and cracked the oddest jokes you ever heard. One afternoon, after spending the whole time in this way, he recollected that he had not yet informed his heir of one important secret, namely, the entrance to his treasure house.
"This was a chink, covered over with an excrescence of the bark, in the aged apple-tree, at the juncture of a large bough (the very bough that was lately cracked by the hurricane), and it was here that he had accumulated the spoils of the many expeditions he had undertaken, the loot of provinces and the valuable property he had appropriated nearer home, including the diamond locket. So cunningly had he chosen his treasure vault that not one of all his courtiers, not even his queens, could ever discover it, though they were all filled with the most intense desire and burning cupidity. The monarch thoroughly enjoyed the jest, for all the time they were sitting right over it, and that was, no doubt, why they could not see it, being under their feet. Well, the old king recollected that afternoon that he had not communicated the secret to his heir, and decided that the time had come when it was necessary to do so. He therefore gave out that he felt sleepy after so much feasting, and desired his friends to leave him alone for a while, all except the missel-thrush (not the present, of course, but his ancestor).
"Accordingly they all flew away to flirt in the copse, and so soon as the court was clear the king told the missel-thrush to go and send his son to him, as he had something of importance to communicate in private. The missel-thrush did as he was bid, and in about half-an-hour the young prince approached the palace. But when he came near he saw that the king, overcome perhaps by too much feasting, had dozed off into slumber. As it was a rule in the palace that the monarch must never be awakened, the prince perched silently close by.
"Now, while he was thus sitting waiting for the king to wake up, as he watched him it occurred to him that if any one came by—as the warden of the orchard and—saw the two magpies up in the tree, he would wonder which was which. Instead of one old Kapchack, lo! there would be two antique Kapchacks.
"Thought the prince: 'The king is very clever, exceedingly clever, but it seems to me that he has overreached himself. For certainly, if it is discovered that there are two old ones about, inquiries will be made, and a difficulty will arise, and it is not at all unlikely that one of us will be shot. It seems to me that the old fellow has lived a little too long, and that his wits are departing (here he gave a quiet hop closer), and gone with his feathers, and it is about time I succeeded to the throne. (Another hop closer.) In an empire like this, so recently founded, the sceptre must be held in vigorous claws, and upon the whole, as there is no one about——' He gave a most tremendous peck upon the poor old king's head, and Kapchack fell to the ground, out of the tree, stone dead upon the grass.
"The prince turned his head upon one side, and looked down upon him; then he quietly hopped into his place, shut his eye, and dozed off to sleep. By-and-by the courtiers ventured back by twos and threes, and gathered on the tree, respectfully waiting till he should awake, and nodding, and winking, and whispering to each other about the body in the grass. Presently his royal highness woke up, yawned, complained that the gout grew worse as he got older, and asked for the prince, who had been sitting by him just now. Then looking round and seeing that all were a little constrained in their manner, he glanced in the same direction they did, and exclaimed that there was his poor son and heir lying in the grass!
"With great lamentation he had the body laid out in state, and called in the court physicians to examine how the prince (for so he persisted in calling the dead monarch) came by his fate. Now, there was no disguising the fact that the deceased had been most foully murdered, for his skull was driven in by the force of the blow; but you see those were dangerous times, and with a despotic king eyeing them all the while, what could the physicians do? They discovered that there was a small projecting branch which had been broken off half-way down the tree and which had a sharp edge, or splinter, and that this splinter precisely fitted the wound in the head. Without doubt the prince had been seized with sudden illness, had fallen and struck his head against the splinter. It was ordered that this bough should be at once removed. Kapchack raised a great lamentation, as he had lost his son and heir, and in that character the dead monarch was ceremoniously interred in the royal vaults, which are in the drain the hunted hare took refuge in under the orchard.
"And so complete was the resemblance the prince bore to his dead parent, owing to the loss of his eye and the plucking of his feathers, that for the most part the courtiers actually believed that it really was the prince they had buried, and all the common people accepted it without doubt. One or two who hinted at a suspicion when they were alone with Kapchack the Second received promises of vast rewards to hold their tongues; and no sooner had they left his presence than he had them assassinated. Thus the dynasty was firmly consolidated, just as the dead founder had desired, though in rather a different manner to what he expected.
"But the new (or as he appeared the old) king had not been many days on the throne when he remembered the immense treasure of which his parent had been possessed. Sending every one away on one pretext and another, he searched the palace from attic to basement, peeped into all the drawers his father had used, turned over every document, sounded every wall, bored holes in the wainscot, ripped up the bark, and covered himself with dust in his furious endeavours to find it. But though he did this twenty times, though he examined every hollow tree within ten miles, and peered into everything, forcing even the owl's ancestor to expose certain skeletons that were in his cupboard, yet could he never find it.
"And all the while the greatest difficulty he encountered was to hold his tongue; he did not dare let out that he was looking for the treasure, because, of course, everybody thought that he was Kapchack, the same who had put it away. He had to nip his tongue with his beak till it bled to compel himself by sheer pain to abstain from reviling his predecessor. But it was no good, the treasure could not be found. He gave out that all this searching was to discover an ancient deed or treaty by which he was entitled to a distant province. As the deed could not be found (having never existed), he marched his army and took the province by force. And, will you believe it, my friends, the fact is that from that time to this (till the hurricane broke the bough the other day) none of the King Kapchacks have had the least idea where their treasure was. They have lived upon credit.