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