seemed to be a sign for everybody else
to do the same, and all began forming themselves in a sort of line of
march.

"What is to be done with this other prisoner, your highness?" inquired
the duke, making a poke with his forefinger at Sir Norman. "Is he to
stay here, or is he to accompany us?"

His highness turned round, and putting his face close up to Sir Norman's
favored him with a malignant grin.

"You'd like to come, wouldn't you, my dear young friend?"

"Really," said Sir Norman, drawing back and returning the dwarf's stare
with compound interest, "that depends altogether on the nature of
the entertainment; but, at the same time, I'm much obliged to you for
consulting my inclinations."

This reply nearly overset his highness's gravity once more, but he
checked his mirth after the first irresistible squeal; and finding
the company were all arranged in the order of going, and awaiting his
sovereign pleasure, he turned.

"Let him come," he said, with his countenance still distorted by inward
merriment; "It will do him good to see how we punish offenders here, and
teach him what he is to expect himself. Is your majesty ready?"

"My majesty has been ready and waiting for the last five minutes,"
replied the lady, over-looking his proffered hand with grand disdain,
and stepping lightly down from her throne.

Her rising was the signal for the unseen band to strike up a grand
triumphant "Io paean," though, had the "Rogue's March" been a popular
melody in those times, it would have suited the procession much more
admirably. The queen and the dwarf went first, and a vivid contrast they
were--she so young, so beautiful, so proud, so disdainfully cold; he so
ugly, so stunted, so deformed, so fiendish. After them went the band of
sylphs in white, then the chancellor, archbishop, and embassadors; next
the whole court of ladies and gentlemen; and after them Sir Norman, in
the custody of two of the soldiers. The condemned earl came last, or
rather allowed himself to be dragged by his four guards; for he seemed
to have become perfectly palsied and dumb with fear. Keeping time to the
triumphant march, and preserving dismal silence, the procession wound
its way along the room and through a great archway heretofore hidden
by the tapestry now lifted lightly by the nymphs. A long stone passage,
carpeted with crimson and gold, and brilliantly illuminated like
the grand saloon they had left, was thus revealed, and three similar