ood.

"What is the matter with him?" asked the Prince.

"He is dead," said the Magpie, with a croak.

No, there was not the least use in being angry with him now. On the
contrary, the Prince felt almost sorry for him, except that he looked
so peaceful with all his cares at rest. And this was being dead? So even
kings died?

"Well, well, he hadn't an easy life, folk say, for all his grandeur.
Perhaps he is glad it is over. Good-by, your Majesty."

With another cheerful tap of her beak, Mistress Mag shut down the little
door in the tiles, and Prince Dolor's first and last sight of his uncle
was ended.

He sat in the center of his traveling-cloak, silent and thoughtful.

"What shall we do now?" said the magpie. "There's nothing much more to
be done with his majesty, except a fine funeral, which I shall certainly
go and see. All the world will. He interested the world exceedingly when
he was alive, and he ought to do it now he's dead--just once more.
And since he can't hear me, I may as well say that, on the whole, his
majesty is much better dead than alive--if we can only get somebody
in his place. There'll be such a row in the city presently. Suppose we
float up again and see it all--at a safe distance, though. It will be
such fun!"

"What will be fun?"

"A revolution."

Whether anybody except a magpie would have called it "fun" I don't know,
but it certainly was a remarkable scene.

As soon as the cathedral bell began to toll and the minute-guns to
fire, announcing to the kingdom that it was without a king, the people
gathered in crowds, stopping at street corners to talk together. The
murmur now and then rose into a shout, and the shout into a roar. When
Prince Dolor, quietly floating in upper air, caught the sound of their
different and opposite cries, it seemed to him as if the whole city had
gone mad together.

"Long live the king!" "The king is dead--down with the king!" "Down with
the crown, and the king too!" "Hurrah for the republic!" "Hurrah for no
government at all!"

Such were the shouts which traveled up to the traveling-cloak. And then
began--oh, what a scene!

When you children are grown men and women--or before--you will hear and
read in books about what are called revolutions--earnestly I trust that
neither I nor you may ever see one. But they have happened, and may
happen again, in other countries besides Nomansland, when wicked kings
have helped to make their people wicked too, or out