Presently the mouth of the Cockatrice unsealed itself, and began to babble of green fields. “Hay--I want hay!” said the Cockatrice; “or grass. Does the world contain any grass?” Beppo went out, and presently returned with an armful. Very slowly the Cockatrice began munching the fresh fodder, and Beppo, intent on feeding him back to life, ran to and fro between the hillside and the cavern till he was exhausted and could go no more. He sat down and watched the Cockatrice finish his meal. Presently, when the monster found that his fodder was at an end, he puckered a great lid, and far up aloft in the wall of the cave flashed out a green eye. If all the emeralds in the world were gathered together, they might shine like that; if all the glow-worms came up out of the fields and put their tails together, they might make as great an orb of fire. All the cave looked as green as grass when the eye of the Cockatrice lighted on it; and Beppo, seeing so mighty an optic turning its rays on him, felt all at once shrivelled and small, and very weak at the knees. “Oh, Cockatrice,” he said, in a monstrous sad voice, “I hope I haven’t hurt you!” “On the contrary,” said the Cockatrice, “you have done me much good. What are you going to do with me now?” “I do with you?” cried Beppo, astonished at so wild a possibility offering to come true. “I would like to get you out, of course--but can I?” “I would like that dearly also!” said the Cockatrice. “But how can I?” inquired Beppo. “Keep me warm and feed me,” re-turned the monster. “Presently I shall be able to find out where my tail is. When I can move that I shall be able to get out.” Beppo undertook whatever the Cockatrice told him--it was so grand to have a Cockatrice of his own. But it was a hard life, stoking up fires day and night, and bringing the Cockatrice the fodder necessary to replenish his drowsy being. When Beppo was quite tired out he would come and lay his head against the monster’s snout; and the Cockatrice would open a benevolent eye and look at him affectionately. “Dear Cockatrice,” said the boy one day, “tell me about yourself, and how you lived and what the world was like when you were free!” “Do you see any green in my eye?” said the Cockatrice. “I do, indeed!” said Beppo. “I never saw anything so green in all the world.” “That’s all right, then!” said the Cockatrice. “Climb up and look in, and you will see what the world was like when I was young.” So Beppo climbed and scrambled, and slipped and clung, till he found himself on the margin of a wonderful green lake, which was but the opening into the whole eye of the Cockatrice. And as soon as Beppo looked, he had lost his heart for ever to the world he saw there. It was there, quite real before him: a whole world full of living and moving things--the world before the trouble of man came to it. “I see green hills, and fields, and rocks, and trees,” cried Beppo, “and among them a lot of little Cockatrices are playing!”