Before I saw what was coming I heard a great trampling noise. I saw trees break and fall down. Flocks of birds came flying toward me, and I saw the deer start up and run. Then I saw enormous shapes coming striding through the gardens. They were as men, but as men high as towers. As they came on, trees fell down before them, and beasts broke out of their pits and cages and crouched before them. The beasts were filled with fear, and they roared and screeched and trumpeted as if fearful things were about to happen to them. The giant men passed where I stood in the great chariot and they came to the gateway that led into the courts of the King’s palace. They put their hands to the stones above the gateway, and the heavy, mortared stones fell, leaving them a space high enough for them to pass through. I looked from the King’s palace toward the city, and I saw the Way of the Lions and it was black with people that fled from the palace--soldiers and servants and attendants. I saw the beasts of the gardens bound or crash through the broken gateway, entering the courts of the palace. I saw the giant men come forth from the palace. Now they held a man by the arms and dragged him along. They crossed the gardens dragging the man, and for a time I watched the dust that their progress made. As I watched I saw some one come fleeing from the palace. He ran on, coming straight to the place from where I watched. He stumbled as he ran, and I saw him fall into the Pit of the Serpent. It had seemed to me as I watched him that this was the boy who had walked with the strange man in the gardens. In my hands I had the little drum whose sound could put a spell upon the queen serpent. I ran toward the pit holding the drum. And when I bent over I saw that the head of the serpent was very near to the boy. I beat upon the drum, and the serpent heard, and her head ceased to sway about. Then her head went down, and she remained in her coils upon the ground of the pit. I drew the boy up, and I led him to the lake and I bathed his face and his hands. The day had almost passed before he was able to speak to me. Then he told me who he was, and what the events were that had happened in the King’s palace. And that boy is the one who is before you now, O King of the Western Island, Eean, the fisherman’s son, who was apprenticed to the Enchanter. V. HOW BIRD-OF-GOLD WENT TO THE TOP OF THE TOWER Long did it take Eean to tell me the whole of the story, and when he had told and I had gathered and put together all of it, I said to him, “Not yet has the tower fallen, and ere it comes down one might go to the top and take the Magic Mirror of the Babylonians and put it in the hands of the King.” “The King may be dead,” Eean said, “or else he may be in such a state that he cannot see or hear any more.”