ould I had shared the adventure
with you. It would have been a thing for our bards to write of, for
our soldiers to sing over their campfires. But now I shall have
none of the glory. I was sleeping in a tree. It was you who were
the hero, the prince."

"Ah, sweet prince, had they once laid hold on the true prize,
methinks neither you nor I would so easily have escaped," said
Paul, who had vivid recollections of the iron hands that had been
laid upon him by the stern men who had carried him off. "I know not
how I could have escaped, had it not been that they were willing to
be quit of me when they found out I was not him whom they sought."

But the prince was hardly satisfied with the rather tame ending to
the adventure.

"To be rescued by a farmer, and carried home on his nag!" he said,
tossing back his curls with a gesture of hauteur. "Paul, I would
that you had cut your way through the very heart of them. I would
you had left at least one or two dead upon the spot. Had we been
together--" He clenched his hands for a moment, but then laughed a
little, and said in a whisper--"But no matter, Paul; they all say
that you played the hero, and I will not envy you for it. We shall
be men one day, and then I shall come and claim your promise. You
will be my faithful esquire, and I will be your liege lord.
Together we will roam the world in search of adventure, and well I
know that we shall meet with such as will not disgrace the royal
house of the Plantagenet."

The child's eyes flashed, and an answering spark was kindled in the
breast of the hardy little Paul. He put his hand within that of the
prince, and cried loud enough to be heard by those who stood by:

"Dear my lord, I will serve you to the death. I will go with you to
the world's end."

Sir James laid a warning hand upon his son's shoulder.

"Boy," he said in a low voice, "it becomes thee not thus to put
thyself forward in the presence of royalty. Be silent before thy
betters, and show thy loyalty by thy deeds, not by high-sounding
words of which thou canst have but little understanding."

Paul was instantly abashed. Indeed, in those days it was not usual
for children to make their voices heard in the presence of their
elders; but the prince was privileged, and it was his words that
had drawn forth this exclamation from Paul.

The king and the queen, however, smiled upon the boy; and the
latter said in tender tones, that would have amazed some amongst
her