from it a sort
of chair, in which the woman and the child placed themselves and were
drawn up, never to come down again as long as they lived. Leaving them
there, the man descended the ladder, took it to pieces again and packed
it in his pack, mounted the horse and disappeared across the plain.

Every month they used to watch for him, appearing like a speck in the
distance. He fastened his horse to the foot of the tower, and climbed
it, as before, laden with provisions and many other things. He always
saw the Prince, so as to make sure that the child was alive and well,
and then went away until the following month.

While his first childhood lasted Prince Dolor was happy enough. He
had every luxury that even a prince could need, and the one thing
wanting,--love,--never having known, he did not miss. His nurse was very
kind to him though she was a wicked woman. But either she had not been
quite so wicked as people said, or she grew better through being shut up
continually with a little innocent child who was dependent upon her for
every comfort and pleasure of his life.

It was not an unhappy life. There was nobody to tease or ill-use him,
and he was never ill. He played about from room to room--there were four
rooms, parlor, kitchen, his nurse's bedroom, and his own; learned to
crawl like a fly, and to jump like a frog, and to run about on all-fours
almost as fast as a puppy. In fact, he was very much like a puppy or
a kitten, as thoughtless and as merry--scarcely ever cross, though
sometimes a little weary.

As he grew older, he occasionally liked to be quiet for a while, and
then he would sit at the slits of windows--which were, however, much
bigger than they looked from the bottom of the tower--and watch the
sky above and the ground below, with the storms sweeping over and the
sunshine coming and going, and the shadows of the clouds running races
across the blank plain.

By and by he began to learn lessons--not that his nurse had been ordered
to teach him, but she did it partly to amuse herself. She was not a
stupid woman, and Prince Dolor was by no means a stupid boy; so they got
on very well, and his continual entreaty, "What can I do? what can you
find me to do?" was stopped, at least for an hour or two in the day.

It was a dull life, but he had never known any other; anyhow, he
remembered no other, and he did not pity himself at all. Not for a long
time, till he grew quite a big little boy, and could read