Excerpt: ...approaching contest, and decline to join either party. They say that from time immemorial they have been free mountaineers, owing allegiance to no one, and if they have attended your court it has been from courtesy, and not from any necessity that they were under." "They are despicable creatures," said the king, who was secretly annoyed, but would not show it. "Ki Ki, I deliver them over to you; let your men plunder them as they like." "The finches," went on the owl. "I hardly know