she had flung her arms about her mother's neck again. She was
torn away once more, and with her gown on fire. Two or three men held
her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown
flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying
she would be alone in the world, now; and begging to be allowed to die
with her mother. Both the girls screamed continually, and fought for
freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of
heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony--the King glanced from the frantic
girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face against
the wall, and looked no more. He said, "That which I have seen, in that
one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide
there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights,
till I die. Would God I had been blind!"

Hendon was watching the King. He said to himself, with satisfaction,
"His disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler. If he had
followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he
was King, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed. Soon
his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be
whole again. God speed the day!"

That same day several prisoners were brought in to remain over night, who
were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom, to
undergo punishment for crimes committed. The King conversed with these
--he had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself for the
kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity offered
--and the tale of their woes wrung his heart. One of them was a poor
half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weaver
--she was to be hanged for it. Another was a man who had been accused of
stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had imagined that
he was safe from the halter; but no--he was hardly free before he was
arraigned for killing a deer in the King's park; this was proved against
him, and now he was on his way to the gallows. There was a tradesman's
apprentice whose case particularly distressed the King; this youth said
he found a hawk, one evening, that had escaped from its owner, and he
took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it; but the court
convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death.

The King was furious over these inhumanities, and w