quite easily.
Then he suddenly took to books, which the deaf-mute brought him from
time to time--books which, not being acquainted with the literature of
Nomansland, I cannot describe, but no doubt they were very interesting;
and they informed him of everything in the outside world, and filled him
with an intense longing to see it.

From this time a change came over the boy. He began to look sad and
thin, and to shut himself up for hours without speaking. For his nurse
hardly spoke, and whatever questions he asked beyond their ordinary
daily life she never answered. She had, indeed, been forbidden, on pain
of death, to tell him anything about himself, who he was, or what he
might have been.

He knew he was Prince Dolor, because she always addressed him as "My
Prince" and "Your Royal Highness," but what a prince was he had not
the least idea. He had no idea of anything in the world, except what he
found in his books.

He sat one day surrounded by them, having built them up round him like
a little castle wall. He had been reading them half the day, but feeling
all the while that to read about things which you never can see is like
hearing about a beautiful dinner while you are starving. For almost the
first time in his life he grew melancholy; his hands fell on his lap; he
sat gazing out of the window-slit upon the view outside--the view he
had looked at every day of his life, and might look at for endless days
more.

Not a very cheerful view,--just the plain and the sky,--but he liked it.
He used to think, if he could only fly out of that window, up to the sky
or down to the plain, how nice it would be! Perhaps when he died--his
nurse had told him once in anger that he would never leave the tower
till he died--he might be able to do this. Not that he understood much
what dying meant, but it must be a change, and any change seemed to him
a blessing.

"And I wish I had somebody to tell me all about it--about that and many
other things; somebody that would be fond of me, like my poor white
kitten."

Here the tears came into his eyes, for the boy's one friend, the
one interest of his life, had been a little white kitten, which the
deaf-mute, kindly smiling, once took out of his pocket and gave him--the
only living creature Prince Dolor had ever seen.

For four weeks it was his constant plaything and companion, till one
moonlight night it took a fancy for wandering, climbed on to the parapet
of the tower, dropped o