And suddenly little Peter understood what it is to be hungry, and that, if folk were hungry, they must first find means of feeding themselves before they could listen. So he gave the beggar all that he had of food in his packet, which was the least that he could do, and sent him on his way, charging him with the message. At the top of the hill, Peter came on another man, sitting under a sycamore tree. The man was a youth, and very beautiful, and he was making a little song, which went like this:-- “_Open, world, your trembling petals slowly, Here one, there one, natal to its hour, Toward the time when, holden in a vessel holy, You shall be a flower._” Though Peter did not know what the song might mean, yet it fell sweetly upon the night, and he liked to listen. And when it was done, he went and stood before the youth. “Sir,” he said, “the world is beginning. You must go and help the king.” “I know, I know, little lad,” said the youth, and his voice was clear, like bird-notes that were turning into words. “I, too, tell the message, making it in a song.” And these words made Peter glad, so that his strength was new, and he ran on with the poet’s gentle music in his ears. I cannot tell you how far Peter went, but he went very far, and to many a lonely outpost, and away and away on a drear frontier. It was long to go and hard to do, but that is the way the world is made; and little Peter went on, now weary, now frightened, now blithe, now in good company, now alone and in the dark. I cannot tell you all the adventures he had and all the things he did--perhaps you will know these in some other way, sometime. And there were those to whom he told the message who listened, or set out in haste for the king’s palace; and some promised that they would go another day, and a few ran to tell others. But many and many were like the hundred heralds and the thousand trumpeters and the king’s High Council, and found many a reason why they might not set out. And some there were who mocked Peter, saying that the world indeed was doing very well without their help and would work itself out if only one would wait; and others would not even listen to the little lad.