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ince frequently formed one of the party which indulged in these illegal practices; that he was as lawless and desperate as the worst of them; and that he was known to boast among his boon companions of his exploits as a common highwayman, and to exhibit proudly the plunder he had thus acquired. It was enough. The judge reminded the court that they were met to try, not the prince, but the prisoner at the bar; and painful as the fact was, it was no affair of theirs at that time to investigate the conduct of another man, except in as far as it threw light on the present case. The good judge was not the only man in England who had watched the dissipated career of the young prince with sorrow and concern. All to whom the honour of their country was dear bewailed the wasted youth and misused talents of this boy, whom his father's jealousy and illiberality had driven into courses of riot and debauchery. They longed for the time to come, ere it was too late, when the serious duties of the camp or the throne would call out those better traits of his disposition which at present lay hidden beneath what was discreditable and wretched. They saw in him a nobility disfigured and a chivalry marred, still capable of asserting itself, but which as yet every rebuke and every warning had failed to arouse; and on this account the good people of England sorrowed with a jealous sorrow over their "Prince Hal," and looked forward with trembling to see how all this would end. But to return. The case against the prisoner was full and complete, and nothing now remained but to pronounce him guilty, and sentence him to the penalty his crime required. This duty the judge was proceeding to discharge, when at the door of the court was heard a commotion. For a moment the judge's words were drowned in the shuffling of feet and the sound of voices; then the door opened, and in walked a youth, scarcely more than a boy, tall, slender, and handsome, with flushed cheeks and wild eye, fashionably dressed, with a sword at his side and a plumed hat upon his head. "The Prince of Wales!" broke from the lips of a score of onlookers, as they recognised in that youth the heir to the crown, towards whose delinquencies their thoughts had that moment been turned. He advanced gaily and recklessly to the bench, the crowd falling back on either side to give him passage. As he passed the bar at which the prisoner stood awaiting his sentence, he stopped, an
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