into four rooms--as by drawing a cross within a
circle you will see might easily be done. By making skylights, and a
few slits in the walls for windows, and raising a peaked roof which was
hidden by the parapet, here was a dwelling complete, eighty feet from
the ground, and as inaccessible as a rook's nest on the top of a tree.

A charming place to live in! if you once got up there,--and never wanted
to come down again.

Inside--though nobody could have looked inside except a bird, and hardly
even a bird flew past that lonely tower--inside it was furnished with
all the comfort and elegance imaginable; with lots of books and toys,
and everything that the heart of a child could desire. For its only
inhabitant, except a nurse of course, was a poor solitary child.

One winter night, when all the plain was white with moonlight, there was
seen crossing it a great tall black horse, ridden by a man also big and
equally black, carrying before him on the saddle a woman and a child.
The woman--she had a sad, fierce look, and no wonder, for she was a
criminal under sentence of death, but her sentence had been changed to
almost as severe a punishment. She was to inhabit the lonely tower
with the child, and was allowed to live as long as the child lived--no
longer. This in order that she might take the utmost care of him; for
those who put him there were equally afraid of his dying and of his
living.

Yet he was only a little gentle boy, with a sweet, sleepy smile--he had
been very tired with his long journey--and clinging arms, which held
tight to the man's neck, for he was rather frightened, and the face,
black as it was, looked kindly at him. And he was very helpless, with
his poor, small shriveled legs, which could neither stand nor run
away--for the little forlorn boy was Prince Dolor.

He had not been dead at all--or buried either. His grand funeral had
been a mere pretense: a wax figure having been put in his place, while
he himself was spirited away under charge of these two, the condemned
woman and the black man. The latter was deaf and dumb, so could neither
tell nor repeat anything.

When they reached the foot of the tower, there was light enough to see
a huge chain dangling from the parapet, but dangling only halfway. The
deaf-mute took from his saddle-wallet a sort of ladder, arranged in
pieces like a puzzle, fitted it together, and lifted it up to meet the
chain. Then he mounted to the top of the tower, and slung