"So you are their king now," said the Forest Monster. "I do not begrudge you the position any more. You are welcome to it. I suddenly feel like I don't care for any position of power any more. When I was gaining the power I now possess, I was allowing myself to be blind to anything but my ever-growing hatred of you. Now that I see how unfounded that hatred really was, I feel that it was I who was the true coward. I was sapping the life energy from countless helpless creatures. I did not give them any sporting chance, either. Nor did I have any excuse to justify what I was doing except that I wanted revenge. It is I who should feel ashamed of himself, not you. Now I have all of this power and strength that was brought about by my hate, and it is no longer of any value to me. All it has done was to make me all the more angry and heartless. If this is the price of strength, I think I'd rather be weak. It is far better to be small and have friends than to have all the strength in the universe but be so full of anger and resentment that you can't even enjoy it." "So now that you have become a mountain of power," replied the Lion, "you no longer care to be powerful?" "Exactly," sighed the Forest Monster. "If there were a way to reverse time and put things back as they should be, before I ever hurt anyone, I would do it. I wish I could apologize to all of the poor animals that I sapped. If their spirits are still in the vicinity, I hope they see how utterly foolish I feel for having taken such unfair advantage of them." "It is very sad that so many of our friends and families had to be destroyed in order for you to have learned this lesson," said Elephant, thinking sadly of the loss to the forest and its denizens. "But I hope that you will try to reverse your reputation now by putting your strength to good use. It is hard to forget what you did, but I think that, in time, we will all be able to accept you as a neighbor. At least, if you act like one." "Oh, that I will do," said the spider gratefully. "I will do all that I can to make up for my past misbehaving." "Then it seems we are no longer needed," said one of the Sniffers. "We met the Droffs on our way here, and they have agreed to help us plow our fields. If our job here is done, I think we should like to go home and get started." "Me wants to plow fields," said the Droff who stood beside him. "Then something positive did come of all this tragedy," said Hootsey. "Not only have the Sniffers and the Stinkfoots made friends with the Droffs, but the Forest Monster has had a major-league change of heart. But can we at least find the empty shells of our families and give them a proper burial?" "That would be right," agreed the Forest Monster. "Wait a minute," said Ozma. "You mean to say that the bodies are still around? You didn't devour them entirely?"