A King and a Few Dukes
by Robert William Chambers (9780217663656)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A VOICE IN THE FOREST. I WALKED on through the noble fir forest, puffing my pipe and looking out for any stray grouse or pheasant, for I loved to watch my birds as a shepherd watches his flock. The pheasants rarely came into the fir woods; the grouse did sometimes come but seldom stayed. There was one game bird, however, that seemed to fancy the firs, and of this bird I saw a fair number as I strolled along, smoking my pipe and sniffing the balsam saturated air. It was one of my experiments, this game bird,?a cross between the prairie chicken and the domestic Guinea fowl. And it proved a wonderful success, lying close to a dog, flushing in perfect form, wintering well, and feeding on berries and maize until almost tooplump to fly. It had none of the maddening tricks of the Guinea fowl either, so I was more than satisfied, as I watched these heavy, strong winged birds, whirr up from the thickets and go spinning down the dim wooded forest aisles. And as I walked I thought of the King as I had left him, heavy jawed, leaden eyed, bawling for brandy. I knew his history,?most people know it I dare say. Suddenly hustled from his little independent Duchy of Taximbourg by Austria and Germany, he had been thrust, despite the menacing growl of Russia, upon the vacant throne of Boznovia. Theobald of Taximbourg came from a sodden unintelligent line of Princes noted chiefly for their intemperance and poverty. From the crusading junketings of the early Theobalds, his ancestors had been noted for the freedom with which they supplied themselves with heirs, and the bar-sinistre played the important part in their quarterings, to the physical and mental detriment of the Taximbourgs. It told too in their professional pastimes,for all of the Taximbourgs were better blacksmiths,...

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