abreast across the grassy plateau, where the noon sun made a blinding light, like the light of another sun; and they bowed themselves in the brightness and asked the king his will.
But when the king had told them his will and had repeated the message and asked them if they could go willingly, the thousand trumpeters were troubled as one man—and he not yet wholly a man.
“O king,” said they, in fifties and one hundreds, “lo, now, these silver trumpets. These are meet to sound up and down the streets of cities and to call men to feasting and to honour the king, and never are they meet to sound in the lonely outposts. Pray thee, O king, keep us near thee.”
“But what of the message?” the king asked, and none of his trumpeters could help him there, and he would have no unwilling service in his palace or in his kingdom, so he sent them all away. And as they went, little Peter looked after them, and he saw, and the king saw, that for all their purple velvet and lace collars, the thousand trumpeters, marching away fifty abreast, were not all men, but they were apes in manner and swine and hounds at heart. And
