f ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre of so, and
was become a riot. By this time Hendon and the King were hopelessly
separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring
masses of humanity. And so we leave them.

Chapter XXX. Tom's progress.

Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and
murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all
impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.

When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day:
in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.

He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence when
he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them,
with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It no
longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.

He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of
officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, "Way for the King!"

He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming
to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He liked to
receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the
affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called
him brother. O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!

He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon
occasion, being off