As the twin moons descended to the mark of the third hour before dawn, the unconscious forms of the Trid and Cartoush slumbered, wrapped in affectionate vinings from head to ankle, under the damp red boughs of the forest. Beside them, newly grown from the seed-tumble of their sudden arrest, a wide-headed flower nodded in the predawn light, and from its small face a tiny song came forth:

Oh, you who have your liberty,
Pray keep it, while you can!
Don't walk around the streets at night,
And break the laws of Man;
For if you do, you surely will
Find yourself like me,
A-serving out your many years
In a penitentiary

And to these dulcet strains, sung over and over by the immature plantlet, accompanied by the cheerily crude counterpoint of a forest starling, did Billy the Trid, burglar extraordinaire, slowly and painfully awake, freed of the burden of his booty by the mysterious intervention of the forest network.