" "Hurrah for the Republic!" "Hurrah for no
government at all."
Such were the shouts which came up to him and then began, oh! what a
scene! The country was in a revolution. Soldiers were shooting down
people by hundreds in the streets, scaffolds were being erected, heads
dropping off, houses burned, and women and children murdered.
Prince Dolor saw it all. Things happened so fast after one another that
he nearly lost his senses.
"Oh, let me go home," he cried at last, stopping his ears and shutting
his eyes, "only let me go home!" for even his lonely tower and its
dreariness and silence, was absolute paradise after this.
Prince Dolor fell into a kind of swoon and when he awoke he found
himself in his own room.
CHAPTER VIII.
Next morning when Prince Dolor awoke he perceived that his room was
empty.
Very uncomfortable he felt, of course; and just a little frightened.
Especially when he began to call again and again, but nobody answered.
"Nurse--dear nurse--please come back!" he called out. "Come back, and I
will be the best boy in all the land."
And when she did not come back, and nothing but silence answered his
lamentable call, he very nearly began to cry.
"This won't do," he said at last, dashing the tears from his eyes. "It's
just like a baby, and I'm a big boy--shall be a man some day. What has
happened, I wonder? I'll go and see."
He sprang out of bed and crawled from room to room on his knees.
"What in the world am I to do?" thought he, and sat down in the middle
of the floor, half inclined to believe that it would be better to give
up entirely, lay himself down and die.
This feeling, however, did not last long. He jumped up and looked out of
the window. No help there. At first he only saw the broad bleak sunshiny
plain. But, by-and-by, in the mud around the base of the tower he saw
clearly the marks of horses' feet, and just in the spot where the deaf
mute always tied his great black charger, there lay the remains of a
bundle of hay.
"Yes, that's it. He has come and gone, taking nurse with him. Poor
nurse! how glad she must have been to go!"
That was Prince Dolor's first thought. His second was one of
indignation at her cruelty.
He decided that it would be easier to die here alone than out in the
world, among the terrible doings which he had just beheld.
The deaf mute had come--contrived somehow to make the nurse understand
that the king was dead, and that she need ha
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