and it was quite plain to see that he was merely asleep. In the
courtyard itself were other human forms, all still and silent. A row of
pikemen leaned against the wall and in front of them, stretched out upon
the ground, snored the sergeant who had been drilling them when the
spell came upon the castle. A young squire, with a sleeping hawk upon
his wrist, slept leaning against a sleeping horse which he had been
about to mount. Near by lay a page with a hound in leash, both sleeping
as soundly as though they never would awake, and through a window in the
stables the Prince saw a groom lying with a straw in his mouth.

[Illustration]

In the stables themselves a like condition of things prevailed. The
horses slept at their stalls with their noses to the mangers, standing
on their four legs just as they were when they were enchanted a hundred
years before, and on the back of one of them sat the stable-cat. Here
and there upon the ground lay grooms and ostlers, fast asleep among the
straw.

From the stables the Prince made his way to the great kitchen where he
saw equally strange sights, and he could not help smiling when he came
upon the cook with her hand still outstretched to clout the head of the
unhappy scullion whom she had by the ear. Before the fires hung the
spitted partridges and fowls that were cooking for the Princess's
birthday feast, and at the table a maid had fallen asleep with her hands
in a large trough full of dough. She had been making the pastry for a
pie when the sleep fell upon her, and by her side was another maid who
had been plucking a black hen. At the sink a kitchen-knave was leaning
over the pot he had been scouring.

Then the Prince went out into the great hall and saw the courtiers
asleep in the window alcoves, or stretched out upon the polished floor.
Everywhere was a silence so profound that the Prince was almost alarmed
to hear his own breathing, and the beating of his heart sounded like a
muffled drum. On and on he went, through rooms and corridors, up
staircases and down staircases, into the Queen's chamber where he saw
the Queen and her ladies as still and silent as the rest; one of those
ladies had been reading to the Queen at the moment when the charmed
sleep fell upon the castle, and the book, a History of Troy, still lay
open on her lap. Then the Prince went into the King's room where his
Majesty sat with his ministers of state round the Council board. He
almost lingered there,