ed, all the washen beggars should be actual communicants of the
Established Church; but the demand died down when it was found that such
a breed did not exist; and a rush of undesirables to the altar in order
to qualify could hardly be welcomed as a tolerable solution.

There was a tussle, too, among the Knights of the Thorn as to how many
towel-bearers there should be (the towels remaining perquisites
afterwards); but the King and his Master of Ceremonies--the delighted
Max helping them--were able to settle matters to the general
satisfaction, and, by allowing a towel to each foot and twelve cakes of
soap, provided a sufficient number of souvenirs to go round.

And so the day came, the weather was fine, and the attendant crowd
rapturous. The King and his Knights, in nodding plumes and robes of
thorn-stamped velvet, made the show of their lives; organ music rolled
from within, bands played without, and massed choirs sang like angels
from the parapets and galleries above the west doors of the Cathedral.

And when their ordeal by water was over, then the twelve beggars--all of
guaranteed good character although not actual communicants--received
with delight each a new pair of shoes and stockings, which they were
able to sell at fabulous prices, immediately the ceremony was over, to
collectors of curiosities, chiefly Americans. And that same night twelve
very happy beggars, all more or less drunk, made their appearance on the
largest music-hall stage in the metropolis, where the whole scene was
elaborately re-enacted in facsimile, followed by a cinematograph record
of the actual event.

The King was a little disappointed at these modern developments, they
seemed to take away from the penitential character of the performance,
and rather to weaken than restore in the public conscience the due
observance of Lent.

Max, however, assured his father that he had made the greatest hit of
his life; his personal popularity had been greatly enhanced. What
pleased him better was that in feeling for the public pulse, by the
light of his own conscience, he had proved that he was right and the
Prime Minister wrong.

Yet, though ostensibly in the wrong, the Prime Minister had really been
right. He had reckoned that the move might prove a popular one--for the
monarchy; and though a dull average of popularity for that ancient
institution suited his book for the present, he did not wish, in view of
certain eventualities, to see it grea