Ackronnion moved the agate bowl to a suitable spot with his foot. He
sang of autumn and of passing away. The the beast wept as the frore
hills weep in the thaw, and the tears splashed big into the agate
bowl. Ackronnion desperately chaunted on; he told of the glad
unnoticed things men see and do not see again, of sunlight beheld
unheeded on faces now withered away. The bowl was full. Ackronnion was
desperate: the Beast was so close. Once he thought that its mouth was
watering!--but it was only the tears that had run on the lips of the
Beast. He felt as a morsel! The Beast was ceasing to weep! He sang of
worlds that had disappointed the gods. And all of a sudden, crash! and
the staunch spear of Arrath went home behind the shoulder, and the
tears and the joyful ways of the Gladsome Beast were ended and over
for ever.
And carefully they carried the bowl of tears away leaving the body of
the Gladsome Beast as a change of diet for the ominous crow; and going
by the windy house of thatch they said farewell to the Old Man Who
Looks After Fairyland, who when he heard of the deed rubbed his hands
together and mumbled again and again, "And a very good thing, too. My
cabbages! My cabbages!"
And not long after Ackronnion sang again in the sylvan palace of the
Queen of the Woods, having first drunk all the tears in his agate
bowl.
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