d of
his provisions--and what was to happen next? Get out of the tower he
could not: the ladder the deaf-mute used was always carried away again;
and if it had not been, how could the poor boy have used it? And even if
he slung or flung himself down, and by miraculous chance came alive to
the foot of the tower, how could he run away?

Fate had been very hard to him, or so it seemed.

He made up his mind to die. Not that he wished to die; on the contrary,
there was a great deal that he wished to live to do; but if he must die,
he must. Dying did not seem so very dreadful; not even to lie quiet like
his uncle, whom he had entirely forgiven now, and neither be miserable
nor naughty any more, and escape all those horrible things that he had
seen going on outside the palace, in that awful place which was called
"the world."

"It's a great deal nicer here," said the poor little Prince, and
collected all his pretty things round him: his favorite pictures, which
he thought he should like to have near him when he died; his books and
toys--no, he had ceased to care for toys now; he only liked them because
he had done so as a child. And there he sat very calm and patient, like
a king in his castle, waiting for the end.

"Still, I wish I had done something first--something worth doing, that
somebody might remember me by," thought he. "Suppose I had grown a man,
and had had work to do, and people to care for, and was so useful and
busy that they liked me, and perhaps even forgot I was lame? Then it
would have been nice to live, I think."

A tear came into the little fellow's eyes, and he listened intently
through the dead silence for some hopeful sound.

Was there one?--was it his little lark, whom he had almost forgotten?
No, nothing half so sweet. But it really was something--something which
came nearer and nearer, so that there was no mistaking it. It was the
sound of a trumpet, one of the great silver trumpets so admired in
Nomansland. Not pleasant music, but very bold, grand, and inspiring.

As he listened to it the boy seemed to recall many things which had
slipped his memory for years, and to nerve himself for whatever might be
going to happen.

What had happened was this.

The poor condemned woman had not been such a wicked woman after all.
Perhaps her courage was not wholly disinterested, but she had done a
very heroic thing. As soon as she heard of the death and burial of the
King and of the changes that were ta