“But though the trees cried and shrieked in their distress and amazement,—and the monkeys and birds too,—the Bee Baby never made a sound. He lay pressed close against the ground in the awful darkness; as chickens cower when the mother hen sees the hawk’s shadow, and sounds her warning to them. “He was like a little frightened animal, too, when the rocking stopped, and the forest gradually grew quiet around him; and he crept along the ground, through the green tangle, to where a tree had fallen against a cleft in the rocky ledge, carrying a mass of vines down with it, and making a sort of den or shelter. “The brown baby crawled into the farthest corner, and huddled down close under the rock, to wait helplessly for whatever was to come.” The Princess paused. “Poor little soul!” said Phyllisy. “Please go on, Dearie.” And after a moment, she began to speak again:— “Of course you know—though the Bee Baby didn’t—what was making all this disturbance; and if he hadn’t left home so early that morning, before his people were awake, they wouldn’t have forgotten all about him. But when they were awake, they found enough to think of in watching Xyntli. “There stood the giant cone of the mountain, with the thin gray streak of her veil floating from the top. “It looked very peaceful. “Suddenly—without further warning—Xyntli stood, straight and tall, in the top of the mountain, borne up on the servant-winds that live with her inside! “Her veil wrapped her from head to foot, and its loose folds were blown upward by the breath of the winds. Her hair streamed through its topmost folds like gleaming flames; and the blue flashes that shot forth from the veil might have been the anger that flared in her blue eyes when she saw the outside of her mountain! “Now, for the snakes! “She gave a strange, wailing cry—like the wind, or flames rushing up the black throat of the chimney—and down in the depths of the mountain her fiery serpents came writhing out of their caverns, obedient to her call. The blue cone and the whole countryside shuddered with their motion; and as their hot breath scorched the inside of the mountain, thick black smoke arose like thunderclouds, and blotted out the sun. Then the heads of the fiery monsters peered over the rim at the mountain’s top, and they came crawling, gliding down its sides. “And the very fiercest, hungriest of them all was rushing straight to the village of bird-cage huts, nestling in the hollow upon the slope of the mountain! “It was a splendid sight—the mighty cone, purple in the midday darkness, with the green forest at its base, and the serpents, like rivers of fire, pouring down its sides. Smoke and flame rose, streaming upward, where they passed.