ue. He had been on his feet a good part
of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o'clock in the
morning), and had eaten nothing meantime. He murmured drowsily--

"Prithee call me when the table is spread," and sank into a deep sleep
immediately.

A smile twinkled in Hendon's eye, and he said to himself--

"By the mass, the little beggar takes to one's quarters and usurps one's
bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them--with never a
by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. In his
diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth
he keep up the character. Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind
has been disordered with ill-usage. Well, I will be his friend; I have
saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the
bold-tongued little rascal. How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble
and flung back his high defiance! And what a comely, sweet and gentle
face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its
griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his
elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would shame
him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for it he
shall need it!"

He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest,
tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls
with his great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over the boy's form.
Hendon muttered--

"See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? 'twill wake him to
take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep."

He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet
and wrapped the lad in it, saying, "I am used to nipping air and scant
apparel, 'tis little I shall mind the cold!"--then walked up and down the
room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.

"His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; 'twill be odd to
have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that WAS the prince is
prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy,
and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call
itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these seven years
that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome
the poor lad and give him generou