good-natured
monarch, taking his crown off. 'Come, off with your cap!'

Raymond doffed his cap, thrust it into the front of his doublet, and
put out his hands to take the crown which the King held towards him.

But as he did so he noticed a singular change come over his Majesty's
heretofore jolly visage. The eyes of the venerable potentate opened
wider and wider until they were broader than they were long; his
forehead wrinkled, and his nostrils expanded. His face from red became
crimson, and from crimson purple; and he shook all over.

'Who are you, fellow?' he roared out in a terrible voice. 'How did you
get up here? Ho! guards! seize this insolent varlet and cut off his
head this moment!'

There was no time to think twice. Raymond sprang to his feet,
overturning the ivory chair as he did so, so that his transparent
Majesty King Ormund fell off to the platform, which trembled at the
shock. The fifty courtiers who supported it staggered and lost their
footing, and the whole affair came to the ground with a tremendous
crash, landing the King in a mud-puddle, and splashing his transparent
stockings all over with mire.

Taking advantage of the dismay and confusion thus brought about,
Raymond dodged between the legs of a gigantic guard who was on the
point of clutching him, butted his head into the stomach of a second,
who in falling upset a third, over whom a fourth and fifth stumbled;
and, having by this time got to the brink of the broad and deep ditch
beside the road, he crossed it with a flying leap, plunged into the
bushes on the further side, and made such good use of his legs that in
two or three minutes he was beyond the reach of pursuit.

CHAPTER VI.

DONKEY-BACK.

Raymond ran on without paying attention to the way he was going so
long as it was away from King Ormund and his company. By and by he
came to another road, narrower than the one he had left, but leading
also towards the city. There was a heap of stones on the roadside, and
on this Raymond sat down to think over his adventure.

It was a puzzle, whichever way he looked at it. Had the King been
making game of him all along? No, his Majesty had without doubt looked
upon him as a person of consequence. But if so, what had so suddenly
undeceived him?

'The dwarf must be at the bottom of it,' said Raymond to himself.

But how? The dwarf had given him the cap and promised him the kingdom.
He had been very near getting the kingdom; but the