44 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
bottles rea//y contain the things that are written on 
their labels. No, indeed, they are false labels, for, you 
see, these bottles stand in the window where people can 
see them, the demon does not keep them in his pocket 
like those other two I told you of. So when people 
see them they think that they have good powders 
instead of bad ones inside them, and when the 
stoppers are taken out the powders fly into their eyes, 
and they are blinded and never know the difference. 
Almost every one is blinded, for the demon just 
stands at the window of his workshop and_ blows his 
powders through the world. It is not necessary for 
him to walk up and down in it sprinkling them 
about. That would be a long, tedious way of doing 
things. He just blows them, and he need never be 
afraid of blowing too much away, for his bottles are 
magic bottles and always full. Outside his window 
there is always a great crowd looking at the bottles 
and admiring them, whilst the demon stands there in 
his magic suit of clothes, and seems to every one to be 
just what he ought to be. 
They say that somewhere else in the world there 
is a very beautiful house with a radiant angel inside it, 
and that there, in vases of crystal and diamond—or 
something like crystal and diamond, but very much 
more beautiful—are the real things which the demon 
only pretends to have in his ugly little bottles. Any 
