Chapter 4

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The stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag’s feet to the floor where she stood, and almost took her breath.  She stared at the Prince in stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son, that he burst into a roar of laughter.  But the effect upon Tom Canty’s mother and sisters was different.  Their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to distress of a different sort.  They ran forward with woe and dismay in their faces, exclaiming—

“Oh, poor Tom, poor lad!”

The mother fell on her knees before the Prince, put her hands upon his shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears. Then she said—

“Oh, my poor boy!  Thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at last, and ta’en thy wit away.  Ah! why did’st thou cleave to it when I so warned thee ’gainst it?  Thou’st broke thy mother’s heart.”

The Prince looked into her face, and said gently—

“Thy son is well, and hath not lost his wits, good dame.  Comfort thee: let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the King my father restore him to thee.”

“The King thy father!  Oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee.  Shake of this gruesome dream.  Call back thy poor wandering memory.  Look upon me. Am not I thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?”

The Prince shook his head and reluctantly said—

“God knoweth I am loth to grieve thy heart; but truly have I never looked upon thy face before.”

The woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her eyes with her hands, gave way to heart-broken sobs and wailings.

“Let the show go on!” shouted Canty.  "What, Nan!—what, Bet! mannerless wenches! will ye stand in the Prince’s presence?  Upon your knees, ye pauper scum, and do him reverence!”

He followed this with another horse-laugh.  The girls began to plead timidly for their brother; and Nan said—

“An thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his madness:  prithee, do.”

“Do, father,” said Bet; “he is more worn than is his wont.  To-morrow will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not empty home again.”

This remark sobered the father’s joviality, and brought his mind to business.  He turned angrily upon the Prince, and said—

“The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two pennies, mark ye—all this money for a half-year’s rent, else out of this we go.  Show what thou’st gathered with thy lazy begging.”

The Prince said—

“Offend me not with thy sordid matters.  I tell thee again I am the King’s son.”

A sounding blow upon the Prince’s shoulder from Canty’s broad palm sent him staggering into goodwife Canty’s arms, who clasped him to her breast, and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing her own person.  The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son.  The Prince sprang away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming—

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“Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam.  Let these swine do their will upon me alone.”

This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about their work without waste of time.  Between them they belaboured the boy right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for showing sympathy for the victim.

“Now,” said Canty, “to bed, all of ye.  The entertainment has tired me.”

The light was put out, and the family retired.  As soon as the snorings of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly from the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort and compassion in his ear the while.  She had saved a morsel for him to eat, also; but the boy’s pains had swept away all appetite—at least for black and tasteless crusts.  He was touched by her brave and costly defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try to forget her sorrows.  And he added that the King his father would not let her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded.  This return to his ‘madness’ broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.

As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane.  She could not describe it, she could not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to detect it and perceive it.  What if the boy were really not her son, after all?  Oh, absurd!  She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her griefs and troubles.  No matter, she found that it was an idea that would not ‘down,’ but persisted in haunting her.  It pursued her, it harassed her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored.  At last she perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without question, whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and worrying doubts.  Ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the difficulty; therefore she set her wits to work at once to contrive that test.  But it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish.  She turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged to relinquish them all—none of them were absolutely sure, absolutely perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her.  Evidently she was racking her head in vain—it seemed manifest that she must give the matter up.  While this depressing thought was passing through her mind, her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had fallen asleep.  And while she listened, the measured breathing was broken by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream.  This chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her laboured tests combined.  She at once set herself feverishly, but noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, “Had I but seen himthen, I should have known!  Since that day, when he was little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his hand before his eyes, even as he did that day; and not as others would do it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outward—I have seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed.  Yes, I shall soon know, now!”

By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy’s side, with the candle, shaded, in her hand.  She bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely breathing in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles.  The sleeper’s eyes sprang wide open, and he cast a startled stare about him—but he made no special movement with his hands.

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The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment.  She tried to believe that her Tom’s madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do it.  "No,” she said, “hishandsare not mad; they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time.  Oh, this is a heavy day for me!”

Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing again—the failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervals—with the same result which had marked the first test; then she dragged herself to bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, “But I cannot give him up—oh no, I cannot, I cannot—hemustbe my boy!”

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The poor mother’s interruptions having ceased, and the Prince’s pains having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at last sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. Hour after hour slipped away, and still he slept like the dead. Thus four or five hours passed. Then his stupor began to lighten. Presently, while half asleep and half awake, he murmured—

“Sir William!”

After a moment—

“Ho, Sir William Herbert!  Hie thee hither, and list to the strangest dream that ever . . . Sir William! dost hear?  Man, I did think me changed to a pauper, and . . . Ho there!  Guards! Sir William!  What! is there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack! it shall go hard with—”

“What aileth thee?” asked a whisper near him.  "Who art thou calling?”

“Sir William Herbert.  Who art thou?”

“I?  Who should I be, but thy sister Nan?  Oh, Tom, I had forgot! Thou’rt mad yet—poor lad, thou’rt mad yet:  would I had never woke to know it again!  But prithee master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we die!”

The startled Prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sank back among his foul straw with a moan and the ejaculation—

“Alas! it was no dream, then!”

In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were upon him again, and he realised that he was no longer a petted prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves.

In the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away.  The next moment there were several sharp raps at the door; John Canty ceased from snoring and said—

“Who knocketh?  What wilt thou?”

A voice answered—

“Know’st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?”

“No.  Neither know I, nor care.”

“Belike thou’lt change thy note eftsoons.  An thou would save thy neck, nothing but flight may stead thee.  The man is this moment delivering up the ghost.  ’Tis the priest, Father Andrew!”

“God-a-mercy!” exclaimed Canty.  He roused his family, and hoarsely commanded, “Up with ye all and fly—or bide where ye are and perish!”

Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street and flying for their lives.  John Canty held the Prince by the wrist, and hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice—

“Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name.  I will choose me a new name, speedily, to throw the law’s dogs off the scent.  Mind thy tongue, I tell thee!”

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He growled these words to the rest of the family—

“If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London Bridge; whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper’s shop on the bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee into Southwark together.”

At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light; and not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing, dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river frontage. There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up and down the Thames; London Bridge was illuminated; Southwark Bridge likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of coloured lights; and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies with an intricate commingling of shooting splendours and a thick rain of dazzling sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were crowds of revellers; all London seemed to be at large.

John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat; but it was too late.  He and his tribe were swallowed up in that swarming hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in an instant. We are not considering that the Prince was one of his tribe; Canty still kept his grip upon him.  The Prince’s heart was beating high with hopes of escape, now.  A burly waterman, considerably exalted with liquor, found himself rudely shoved by Canty in his efforts to plough through the crowd; he laid his great hand on Canty’s shoulder and said—

“Nay, whither so fast, friend?  Dost canker thy soul with sordid business when all that be leal men and true make holiday?”

“Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not,” answered Canty, roughly; “take away thy hand and let me pass.”

“Sith that is thy humour, thou’ltnotpass, till thou’st drunk to the Prince of Wales, I tell thee that,” said the waterman, barring the way resolutely.

“Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!”

Other revellers were interested by this time.  They cried out—

“The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.”

So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of its handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the other, according to ancient custom. This left the Prince hand-free for a second, of course.  He wasted no time, but dived among the forest of legs about him and disappeared.  In another moment he could not have been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had been the Atlantic’s and he a lost sixpence.

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He very soon realised this fact, and straightway busied himself about his own affairs without further thought of John Canty.  He quickly realised another thing, too.  To wit, that a spurious Prince of Wales was being feasted by the city in his stead.  He easily concluded that the pauper lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his stupendous opportunity and become a usurper.

Therefore there was but one course to pursue—find his way to the Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor.  He also made up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual preparation, and then be hanged, drawn and quartered, according to the law and usage of the day in cases of high treason.

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Chapter XI. At Guildhall.

The royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way down the Thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. The air was laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like jewelled lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted from the banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless flash and boom of artillery.

To Tom Canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. To his little friends at his side, the Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey, they were nothing.

Arrived at the Dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid Walbrook (whose channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under acres of buildings) to Bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges populous with merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to a halt in a basin where now is Barge Yard, in the centre of the ancient city of London.  Tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession crossed Cheapside and made a short march through the Old Jewry and Basinghall Street to the Guildhall.

Tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the Lord Mayor and the Fathers of the City, in their gold chains and scarlet robes of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of the great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the Mace and the City Sword.  The lords and ladies who were to attend upon Tom and his two small friends took their places behind their chairs.

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At a lower table the Court grandees and other guests of noble degree were seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at a multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall.  From their lofty vantage-ground the giants Gog and Magog, the ancient guardians of the city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familiar to it in forgotten generations.  There was a bugle-blast and a proclamation, and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward wall, followed by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef, smoking hot and ready for the knife.

After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose—and the whole house with him—and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess Elizabeth; from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the general assemblage.  So the banquet began.

By midnight the revelry was at its height.  Now came one of those picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day.  A description of it is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it:

‘Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold.  Next came yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin, traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots with pykes’ (points a foot long), ’turned up.  And after them came a knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannell-bone, laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over that, short cloaks of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers’ fashion, with pheasants’ feathers in them.  These were appareled after the fashion of Prussia.  The torchbearers, which were about an hundred, were appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors, their faces black. Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which were disguised, danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a pleasure to behold.’

And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this ‘wild’ dancing, lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter. Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him into a higher and still more entertaining fury.  Tears of mortification sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right royally.  Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he exclaimed—

“I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales! And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground, but will maintain it!”

“Though thou be prince or no prince, ’tis all one, thou be’st a gallant lad, and not friendless neither!  Here stand I by thy side to prove it; and mind I tell thee thou might’st have a worser friend than Miles Hendon and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my child; I talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native.”

The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and bearing.  He was tall, trim-built, muscular.  His doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp.  The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter.  Some cried, “’Tis another prince in disguise!” “’Ware thy tongue, friend:  belike he is dangerous!”  "Marry, he looketh it—mark his eye!”  "Pluck the lad from him—to the horse-pond wi’ the cub!”

Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this happy thought; as instantly the stranger’s long sword was out and the meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it. The next moment a score of voices shouted, “Kill the dog!  Kill him! Kill him!” and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a madman.  His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with undiminished fury.

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His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain, when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, “Way for the King’s messenger!” and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the mob, who fled out of harm’s reach as fast as their legs could carry them. The bold stranger caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away from danger and the multitude.

Return we within the Guildhall.  Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note.  There was instant silence—a deep hush; then a single voice rose—that of the messenger from the palace—and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the whole multitude standing listening.

The closing words, solemnly pronounced, were—

“The King is dead!”

The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord; remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank upon their knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a mighty shout burst forth that seemed to shake the building—

“Long live the King!”

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Poor Tom’s dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him, a moment, then upon the Earl of Hertford. A sudden purpose dawned in his face.  He said, in a low tone, at Lord Hertford’s ear—

“Answer me truly, on thy faith and honour!  Uttered I here a command, the which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter, would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?”

“None, my liege, in all these realms.  In thy person bides the majesty of England.  Thou art the king—thy word is law.”

Tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation—

“Then shall the king’s law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more be law of blood!  Up from thy knees and away!  To the Tower, and say the King decrees the Duke of Norfolk shall not die!”

The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another prodigious shout burst forth—

“The reign of blood is ended!  Long live Edward, King of England!”

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Chapter XII. The Prince and his Deliverer.

As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river.  Their way was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they ploughed into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon the Prince’s—no, the King’s—wrist.  The tremendous news was already abroad, and the boy learned it from a thousand voices at once—“The King is dead!”  The tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a shudder through his frame.  He realised the greatness of his loss, and was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a terror to others had always been gentle with him.  The tears sprang to his eyes and blurred all objects.  For an instant he felt himself the most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God’s creatures—then another cry shook the night with its far-reaching thunders:  "Long live King Edward the Sixth!” and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to his fingers’ ends. “Ah,” he thought, “how grand and strange it seems—I am King!”

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Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the bridge.  This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the river to the other.  The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets, its manufacturing industries, and even its church.  It looked upon the two neighbours which it linked together—London and Southwark—as being well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important.  It was a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village population and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately, and had known their fathers and mothers before them—and all their little family affairs into the bargain.  It had its aristocracy, of course—its fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what-not, who had occupied the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great history of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends; and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way.  It was just the sort of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were born on the Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London Bridge alone.  Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and interminable procession which moved through its street night and day, with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it.  And so they were, in effect—at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and did—for a consideration—whenever a returning king or hero gave it a fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long, straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns.

Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and inane elsewhere.  History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at the age of seventy-one and retired to the country.  But he could only fret and toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so painful, so awful, so oppressive.  When he was worn out with it, at last, he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and fell peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge.

In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished ‘object lessons’ in English history for its children—namely, the livid and decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its gateways.  But we digress.

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Hendon’s lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge.  As he neared the door with his small friend, a rough voice said—

“So, thou’rt come at last!  Thou’lt not escape again, I warrant thee; and if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou’lt not keep us waiting another time, mayhap,”—and John Canty put out his hand to seize the boy.

Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said—

“Not too fast, friend.  Thou art needlessly rough, methinks.  What is the lad to thee?”

“If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others’ affairs, he is my son.”

“’Tis a lie!” cried the little King, hotly.

“Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound or cracked, my boy.  But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no, ’tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me.”

“I do, I do—I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go with him.”

“Then ’tis settled, and there is nought more to say.”

“We will see, as to that!” exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to get at the boy; “by force shall he—”

“If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a goose!” said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword hilt.  Canty drew back.  "Now mark ye,” continued Hendon, “I took this lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser fate?—for whether thou art his father or no—and sooth to say, I think it is a lie—a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in such brute hands as thine.  So go thy ways, and set quick about it, for I like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my nature.”

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John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed from sight in the crowd.  Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither.  It was a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles. The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost exhausted with hunger and fatigue.  He had been on his feet a good part of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o’clock in the morning), and had eaten nothing meantime.  He murmured drowsily—

“Prithee call me when the table is spread,” and sank into a deep sleep immediately.

A smile twinkled in Hendon’s eye, and he said to himself—

“By the mass, the little beggar takes to one’s quarters and usurps one’s bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them—with never a by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort.  In his diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth he keep up the character.  Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind has been disordered with ill-usage.  Well, I will be his friend; I have saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the bold-tongued little rascal.  How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble and flung back his high defiance!  And what a comely, sweet and gentle face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would shame him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for it he shall need it!”

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He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest, tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls with his great brown hand.  A slight shiver passed over the boy’s form. Hendon muttered—

“See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill his body with deadly rheums.  Now what shall I do? ’twill wake him to take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.”

He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet and wrapped the lad in it, saying, “I am used to nipping air and scant apparel, ’tis little I shall mind the cold!”—then walked up and down the room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.

“His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; ’twill be odd to have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he thatwasthe prince is prince no more, but king—for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy, and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these seven years that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh—but I will crack his crown anheinterfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes, thither will we fare—and straightway, too.”

A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap lodgers as these to wait upon themselves.  The door slammed after him, and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot a glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, “Alack, it was but a dream, woe is me!”  Next he noticed Miles Hendon’s doublet—glanced from that to Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said, gently—

“Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me.  Take it and put it on—I shall not need it more.”

Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood there, waiting.  Hendon said in a cheery voice—

“We’ll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little man again, never fear!”

The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall knight of the sword.  Hendon was puzzled, and said—

“What’s amiss?”

“Good sir, I would wash me.”

“Oh, is that all?  Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou cravest.  Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that are his belongings.”

Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or twice with his small impatient foot.  Hendon was wholly perplexed.  Said he—

“Bless us, what is it?”

“Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!”

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Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, “By all the saints, but this is admirable!” stepped briskly forward and did the small insolent’s bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the command, “Come—the towel!” woke him sharply up.  He took up a towel, from under the boy’s nose, and handed it to him without comment.  He now proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to. Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said, indignantly—

“Forbear!  Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?”

This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations.  He muttered to himself, “Lo, the poor thing’s madness is up with the time!  It hath changed with the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is heking! Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too—there is no other way—faith, he would order me to the Tower, else!”

And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest way he was capable of.

While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said—“I think thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?”

“Yes, Sire,” Miles replied; then observed to himself, “If Imusthumour the poor lad’s madness, I must ‘Sire’ him, I must ‘Majesty’ him, I must not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part I play, else shall I play it ill and work evil to this charitable and kindly cause.”

The King warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said—“I would know thee—tell me thy story.  Thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a noble—art nobly born?”

“We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty.  My father is a baronet—one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}—Sir Richard Hendon of Hendon Hall, by Monk’s Holm in Kent.”

“The name has escaped my memory.  Go on—tell me thy story.”

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