So the servants summoned the hundred heralds, who hurried into their blue velvet and silver buckles and came marching, twenty abreast, across the grassy plateau, where the morning sun made patterns like wings, and among the wings they bowed themselves and asked the king his will. “Hundred heralds,” said the king, “be it only that you do this willingly, I would that you go out into my kingdom, into its highways and even to its loneliest outposts, and take my people my message. Cry to them, until each one hears with his heart as well as his head: ‘The world is beginning. You must go and help the king.’” Now, little Peter, when he heard the message, rose and stood beside the king, and in his breast something thrilled and trembled like a smitten chord. But as for the hundred heralds, they were troubled as one man--though he not yet wholly a man. “O king,” they said, twenty at a time, “blue velvet and silver buckles are meet for the streets of cities and to call men to feasting and to honour the king. But as for the highways and the loneliest outposts--that is another matter.” “But what of the message?” the king asked sadly, and this none of the heralds knew how to answer; and presently the king sent them away, for he would never have unwilling service in his palace or in his kingdom. And as they went, little Peter looked after them, and he saw, and the king saw, that for all their blue velvet and silver buckles, the hundred heralds, marching away twenty abreast, were not yet all men, but partly they were apes in manner and swine at heart. And little Peter wondered if he fashioned them as he did his bits of mould, whether they would burst from a sheath, _all_ men, as burst his little plants. “Summon me my thousand trumpeters!” the king bade his servants next. The thousand trumpeters hurried into their purple velvet and their lace collars and seized their silver trumpets, and came marching fifty abreast across the grassy plateau, where the noon sun made a blinding light, like the light of another sun; and they bowed themselves in the brightness and asked the king his will. But when the king had told them his will and had repeated the message and asked them if they could go willingly, the thousand trumpeters were troubled as one man--and he not yet wholly a man. “O king,” said they, in fifties and one hundreds, “lo, now, these silver trumpets. These are meet to sound up and down the streets of cities and to call men to feasting and to honour the king, and never are they meet to sound in the lonely outposts. Pray thee, O king, keep us near thee.”