n the strange
scene, the prince, clad in the cast-off garments of a common laborer,
with his golden curls cut off and not a solitary coin in his pocket,
was conducted outside the palace grounds and left alone in the road.

He was too much dazed to weep. He told himself this was some horrible
dream from which he would waken in the morning, to find himself in his
own beautiful room, lying on his gilded bed under the richly
embroidered silken coverlet.

When dawn broke, however, he found himself hungry, tired, and his body
painfully stiff, under a hedge. He knew now it was no dream but a
reality. He was alone and friendless, with no means of earning his
food. He understood then what hardships the poor were compelled to
undergo, and he began to realize how he had made them suffer, and how,
in turn, he was now to pay a heavy price for his brutal treatment of
the people.

All that day he wandered aimlessly, until, foot-sore and exhausted, he
sank down at the door of a wayside cottage and begged for food and
shelter. These were given to him, and next day he was set to work in
the fields. But his hands were not used to labor, and he was sent
adrift, his fellow workers jeering at him. With a heavy heart, and his
pride humbled, he set forth again to learn the mystery of how to Count
Five.

Long days and endless nights, through the heat of the summer, through
the snows of winter, the autumnal rains and cold blasts of early
spring, he wandered.

A whole year passed away, and he had learned nothing. In truth, he had
almost forgotten why he was aimlessly drifting from place to place,
farther and farther from his home.

Hunger and thirst were more often than not his daily portion, and the
cold earth by night was frequently his couch. Time seemed to drag
along without meaning, and oft-times for a week he heard not the sound
of a human voice.

He was a beggar, generally accepting gratefully what was given to him,
sometimes with harsh words, often with kindly expressions. When he
could, he worked, doing anything for small coins, for a rabbi, who had
taken compassion on him, had said, "Do any honest work, however
repugnant it may at first seem, rather than say haughtily, 'I am the
son of a rich father.'"

For a moment he wondered whether the rabbi had guessed his secret, but
the learned man said to him he was but repeating a maxim from the
Talmud.

Exactly a year from the date of his sentence, as well as he could keep
count,