down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife
uplifted. The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but
there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his
tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.

The hermit watched and listened, for a time, keeping his position and
scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arms, and presently crept
away, saying,--

"It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest by
accident someone be passing."

He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and
another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling
he managed to tie the King's ankles together without waking him. Next he
essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but
the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was
ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to
despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were
bound. Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up
over his head and tied fast--and so softly, so gradually, and so deftly
were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept
peacefully through it all without stirring.

Chapter XXI. Hendon to the rescue.

The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the
low bench. He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and
flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving
eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there,
heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled
and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as
a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay
bound and helpless in his web.

After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,--yet not seeing,
his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,--observed, on a
sudden, that the boy's eyes were open! wide open and staring!--staring up
in frozen horror at the knife. The smile of a gratified devil crept over
the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or his
occupation--

"Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?"

The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced a
smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to
interpret as an affirmative ans