pecked at the tiles with her
beak--truly she was a wonderful bird--and immediately a little hole
opened, a sort of door, through which could be seen distinctly the
chamber below.

"Now look in, my Prince. Make haste, for I must soon shut it up again."

But the boy hesitated. "Isn't it rude?--won't they think us intruding?"

"Oh, dear no! there's a hole like this in every palace; dozens of holes,
indeed. Everybody knows it, but nobody speaks of it. Intrusion! Why,
though the royal family are supposed to live shut up behind stone walls
ever so thick, all the world knows that they live in a glass house where
everybody can see them and throw a stone at them. Now pop down on your
knees, and take a peep at his Majesty."

His Majesty!

The Prince gazed eagerly down into a large room, the largest room he had
ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he could
have ever imagined. A stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice of the
darkened windows, struck across the carpet, and it was the loveliest
carpet ever woven--just like a bed of flowers to walk over; only nobody
walked over it, the room being perfectly empty and silent.

"Where is the King?" asked the puzzled boy.

"There," said Mag, pointing with one wrinkled claw to a magnificent bed,
large enough to contain six people. In the center of it, just visible
under the silken counterpane,--quite straight and still,--with its head
on the lace pillow, lay a small figure, something like wax-work, fast
asleep--very fast asleep! There was a number of sparkling rings on the
tiny yellow hands, that were curled a little, helplessly, like a baby's,
outside the coverlet; the eyes were shut, the nose looked sharp and
thin, and the long gray beard hid the mouth and lay over the breast.
A sight not ugly nor frightening, only solemn and quiet. And so very
silent--two little flies buzzing about the curtains of the bed being the
only audible sound.

"Is that the King?" whispered Prince Dolor.

"Yes," replied the bird.

He had been angry--furiously angry--ever since he knew how his uncle had
taken the crown, and sent him, a poor little helpless child, to be shut
up for life, just as if he had been dead. Many times the boy had felt
as if, king as he was, he should like to strike him, this great, strong,
wicked man.

Why, you might as well have struck a baby! How helpless he lay, with his
eyes shut, and his idle hands folded: they had no more work to do, bad
or g