But it was now noon-day, and there was not a drop of dew in the water, and the bull had been down and drunk, and the bloodhound had lapped, and the old sow and her nine little pigs had wallowed in it, so the water was troubled, and besides that the woodman had felled the tree which now lay across the spring, and the farmer was digging the new watercourse, so the spring was getting lower every minute. Cock-alu had come quite too late; there was not a drop left for poor little Hen-alie.
When Cock-alu saw this he was very much disconcerted; he did not know what to do, he stood a little while considering, and then he set off as hard as he could go to the squirrel’s house to beg a drop of water from her. But the squirrel lived a long way off in the wood, and thus it was a considerable time before he got there.
When he reached the squirrel’s house, however, nobody was at home. He knocked and knocked for a long time, and at last he walked in, but they were all gone out; he peeped therefore into the pantry to see if he could find the water; there was plenty of hazel-nuts and beech-nuts, heaps and heaps of them all laid up in store for winter, but no water; at length he saw the curled-up cherry-leaf, like a water-jug, standing at the squirrel’s bed-side, but it was empty; there was not a single drop in it.
“This is bad business!” said Cock-alu to himself, and turned to leave the house. At the squirrel’s door he met a woodpecker.
“Woodpecker,” says he, “where is the squirrel gone to? I want to beg a drop of water from the silver-spring for my wife Hen-alie, who has got a bean in her throat!”
“Lack-a-day!” said the woodpecker, “the old squirrel drank every drop, and drained the jug into the bargain; he lay sick in bed this morning, but there was such virtue in the water that he got well as soon as he drank it; and now he has taken his wife and the little ones out for an airing; they will not be back till night, I know. But if you will leave any message with me I will be sure and deliver it, for the squirrel and I are very neighborly.”
“Oh!” groaned Cock-alu; “but what would be the use of leaving a message if they have no water to give me!”
With that he came down from the old pine tree where the squirrel lived, set out on his way home again, and came at length out of the Beech-wood, but it was then getting toward evening.
He came to his own yard. There was the perch on which he and Hen-alie had so often sat, and there was the bean-straw, and there lay poor Hen-alie just as he had left her.