is this, then: if you do not repent of your bad ways, you are all
going to be punished--all turned out of the palace together.'

'A mighty punishment!' said the butler. 'A good riddance, say I, of
the trouble of keeping minxes like you in order! And why, pray, should
we be turned out? What have I to repent of now, your holiness?'

'That you know best yourself,' said the girl.

'A pretty piece of insolence! How should I know, forsooth, what a
menial like you has got against me! There are people in this
house--oh! I'm not blind to their ways!--but every one for himself, say
I! Pray, Miss judgement, who gave you such an impertinent message to
His Majesty's household?'

'One who is come to set things right in the king's house.'

'Right, indeed!' cried the butler; but that moment the thought came
back to him of the roar he had heard in the cellar, and he turned pale
and was silent.

The steward took it up next.

'And pray, pretty prophetess,' he said, attempting to chuck her under
the chin, 'what have I got to repent of?'

'That you know best yourself,' said the girl. 'You have but to look
into your books or your heart.'

'Can you tell me, then, what I have to repent of?' said the groom of
the chambers. 'That you know best yourself,' said the girl once more.
'The person who told me to tell you said the servants of this house had
to repent of thieving, and lying, and unkindness, and drinking; and
they will be made to repent of them one way, if they don't do it of
themselves another.'

Then arose a great hubbub; for by this time all the servants in the
house were gathered about her, and all talked together, in towering
indignation.

'Thieving, indeed!' cried one. 'A pretty word in a house where
everything is left lying about in a shameless way, tempting poor
innocent girls! A house where nobody cares for anything, or has the
least respect to the value of property!'

'I suppose you envy me this brooch of mine,' said another. 'There was
just a half sheet of note paper about it, not a scrap more, in a drawer
that's always open in the writing table in the study! What sort of a
place is that for a jewel? Can you call it stealing to take a thing
from such a place as that? Nobody cared a straw about it. It might as
well have been in the dust hole! If it had been locked up--then, to be
sure!'

'Drinking!' said the chief porter, with a husky laugh. 'And who
wouldn't drink when he had a chance? Or who w