of an unrighteous
nation have sprung rulers equally bad; or, without either of these
causes, when a restless country has fancied any change better than no
change at all.

For me, I don't like changes, unless pretty sure that they are for good.
And how good can come out of absolute evil--the horrible evil that went
on this night under Prince Dolor's very eyes--soldiers shooting down
people by hundreds in the streets, scaffolds erected, and heads dropping
off--houses burned, and women and children murdered--this is more than I
can understand.

But all these things you will find in history, my children, and must
by and by judge for yourselves the right and wrong of them, as far as
anybody ever can judge.

Prince Dolor saw it all. Things happened so fast one after another that
they quite confused his faculties.

"Oh, let me go home," he cried at last, stopping his ears and shutting
his eyes; "only let me go home!" for even his lonely tower seemed home,
and its dreariness and silence absolute paradise after all this.

"Good-by, then," said the magpie, flapping her wings. She had been
chatting incessantly all day and all night, for it was actually thus
long that Prince Dolor had been hovering over the city, neither eating
nor sleeping, with all these terrible things happening under his very
eyes. "You've had enough, I suppose, of seeing the world?"

"Oh, I have--I have!" cried the prince, with a shudder.

"That is, till next time. All right, your royal highness. You don't know
me, but I know you. We may meet again some time."

She looked at him with her clear, piercing eyes, sharp enough to see
through everything, and it seemed as if they changed from bird's eyes
to human eyes--the very eyes of his godmother, whom he had not seen for
ever so long. But the minute afterward she became only a bird, and with
a screech and a chatter, spread her wings and flew away.

Prince Dolor fell into a kind of swoon of utter misery, bewilderment,
and exhaustion, and when he awoke he found himself in his own
room--alone and quiet--with the dawn just breaking, and the long rim of
yellow light in the horizon glimmering through the window-panes.

CHAPTER IX

When Prince Dolor sat up in bed, trying to remember where he was,
whither he had been, and what he had seen the day before, he perceived
that his room was empty.

Generally his nurse rather worried him by breaking his slumbers, coming
in and "setting things to rights," as