urnt for it he
shall need it!"

He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest,
tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls
with his great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over the boy's form.
Hendon muttered--

"See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? 'twill wake him to
take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep."

He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet
and wrapped the lad in it, saying, "I am used to nipping air and scant
apparel, 'tis little I shall mind the cold!"--then walked up and down the
room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.

"His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; 'twill be odd to
have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that WAS the prince is
prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy,
and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call
itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these seven years
that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome
the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good
elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh--but I will crack his crown
an HE interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes, thither
will we fare--and straightway, too."

A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal
table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap
lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. The door slammed after him,
and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot a
glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he
murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, "Alack, it was but a dream, woe is
me!" Next he noticed Miles Hendon's doublet--glanced from that to
Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said,
gently--

"Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. Take it and put it
on--I shall not need it more."

Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood there,
waiting. Hendon said in a cheery voice--

"We'll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury
and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little
man again, never fear!"

The boy made no answer, but bent a ste