Then the prosecutor got up, and made a long speech, at the end of which he said, "It is no longer possible to doubt that the prisoner at the bar is guilty. Two witnesses saw him do the deed, and half-a-dozen caught him just as he was pulling the knife out of the body. I therefore call upon you, my Lord, to pass sentence of death."
Said the Parrot, "Certainly."
At this the King pricked up his ears. The man could not be innocent of course, and yet certainly guilty, at the same time. So he turned to the Judge and said—
"If you go against evidence so clear, Judge, I shall begin to suspect that you killed the man yourself."
Said the Parrot, "Certainly."
You may imagine the hubbub that arose in Court when the Judge said this! Everybody saw that the King had made a mistake in his Judge, and even the King himself began to suspect that something was wrong. So he said, rather angrily, to the Parrot—
"Then it is your head ought to be chopped off."
"Chop off his head, then," cried the King; and they
took away the Parrot and chopped off his head
without delay; and all the while he was
being dragged along, he called out,
"Certainly," "Certainly,"
"Certainly."
