So the birds were killed, and the lovely, painted feathers that had lighted up whole forests or made a country beautiful, were pressed close together into dark ugly boxes--or things like boxes--called "crates" (large it is true, but not _quite_ so large as a forest or a country), and then brought over the seas in ships, to dark, ugly houses, where they were taken out and flung in a great heap on the floor. Soon they were sewn into hats which were set out in the windows of milliners' shops for the women with the frozen hearts to buy. You may see such hats now, any time you walk about the streets of London--or of Paris or Vienna, if you go there--for the Goddess of Pity is still sleeping, she has not woken up yet. There you will see them, and outside the window, looking at them--sometimes in a great crowd--you will see those poor women that the demon has treated so badly. There they stand, looking and looking, ravenous, hungry--you would almost say they were--longing to buy them, even though they have new ones of the same sort on their head. Ah, if they could see those birds as they looked when they were shot, before they were dressed and cleaned and made to look so smart and fashionable! If they could see them with the blood-stains upon them, the wet, warm drops running down over the bright breasts--perhaps onto the little ones underneath them--the poor, broken wings dragging over the ground and trying to rise into the air, through which they had once flown so easily, the flapping, the struggling! If they could see all this, and much more that had been done--that _had_ to be done--before there was that nice, gay, elegant shop-window for them to look into, would it not be different then, would not the vain heads begin to think a little and the frozen hearts to melt? No, I do not think so, because of the ugly little demon in the correct suit of clothes. They would look in at the window and go in at the door still, and--shall I tell you something?--it would be the same, just the same, if all those bright feathers in every one of the hats had been stripped, not from the birds' but from the _angels'_ wings. Those who could wear the one could wear the other, and if angels were to come down here I should not wonder if angel-hats were to get to be quite the fashion. Only first, of course, angels would _have_ to come down here. I do not think they are so _very_ likely to. And the worst of it is that not only the _pretty_ women wear the beautiful birds in their hats, but the plain ones do too, which makes so many more of them to be killed. If it was _only_ the pretty women who wore them it would not be quite so bad, but the wicked little demon was much too clever to arrange it like that. He did not wish any of the birds to escape, and I cannot tell you how many _millions_ of them _would_ escape if only the pretty women were to wear their feathers.