The Prince and the Pauper
“So be it, then. I will try to wait. But stop!--_you_ sent him of an
errand?--you! Verily this is a lie--he would not go. He would pull thy
old beard, an’ thou didst offer him such an insolence. Thou hast lied,
friend; thou hast surely lied! He would not go for thee, nor for any
man.”
“For any _man_--no; haply not. But I am not a man.”
“_What_! Now o’ God’s name what art thou, then?”
“It is a secret--mark thou reveal it not. I am an archangel!”
There was a tremendous ejaculation from Miles Hendon--not altogether
unprofane--followed by--
“This doth well and truly account for his complaisance! Right well
I knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any
mortal; but, lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the
word o’ command! Let me--‘sh! What noise was that?”
All this while the little King had been yonder, alternately quaking with
terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown
all the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly
expecting them to reach Hendon’s ear, but always realising, with
bitterness, that they failed, or at least made no impression. So this
last remark of his servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh
fields to the dying; and he exerted himself once more, and with all his
energy, just as the hermit was saying--
“Noise? I heard only the wind.”
“Mayhap it was. Yes, doubtless that was it. I have been hearing it
faintly all the--there it is again! It is not the wind! What an odd
sound! Come, we will hunt it out!”
Now the King’s joy was nearly insupportable. His tired lungs did
their utmost--and hopefully, too--but the sealed jaws and the muffling
sheepskin sadly crippled the effort. Then the poor fellow’s heart sank,
to hear the hermit say--
“Ah, it came from without--I think from the copse yonder. Come, I will
lead the way.”
The King heard the two pass out, talking; heard their footsteps die
quickly away--then he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence.
It seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching
again--and this time he heard an added sound,--the trampling of hoofs,
apparently. Then he heard Hendon say--
“I will not wait longer. I _cannot_ wait longer. He has lost his way
in this thick wood. Which direction took he? Quick--point it out to
me.”
“He--but wait; I will go with thee.”
“Good--good! Why, truly thou art better than thy looks. Marry I do
not think there’s not another archangel with so right a heart as thine.
Wilt ride? Wilt take the wee donkey that’s for my boy, or wilt thou
fork thy holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that I have
provided for myself?--and had been cheated in too, had he cost but the
indifferent sum of a month’s usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker
out of work.”
“No--ride thy mule, and lead thine ass; I am surer on mine own feet, and
will walk.”
“Then prithee mind the little beast for me while I take my life in my
hands and make what success I may toward mounting the big one.”
Then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings,
accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and
finally a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its
spirit, for hostilities seemed to cease from that moment.
With unutterable misery the fettered little King heard the voices and
footsteps fade away and die out. All hope forsook him, now, for the
moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. “My only friend
is deceived and got rid of,” he said; “the hermit will return and--” He
finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with
his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin.
And now he heard the door open! The sound chilled him to the
marrow--already he seemed to feel the knife at his throat. Horror made
him close his eyes; horror made him open them again--and before him
stood John Canty and Hugo!
He would have said “Thank God!” if his jaws had been free.
A moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each
gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the
forest.
CHAPTER XXII. A Victim of Treachery.
Once more ‘King Foo-foo the First’ was roving with the tramps and
outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and
sometimes the victim of small spitefulness at the hands of Canty and
Hugo when the Ruffler’s back was turned. None but Canty and Hugo really
disliked him. Some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck
and spirit. During two or three days, Hugo, in whose ward and charge
the King was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable;
and at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by
putting small indignities upon him--always as if by accident. Twice he
stepped upon the King’s toes--accidentally--and the King, as became his
royalty, was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but
the third time Hugo entertained himself in that way, the King felled
him to the ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe.
Hugo, consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and
came at his small adversary in a fury. Instantly a ring was formed
around the gladiators, and the betting and cheering began.
But poor Hugo stood no chance whatever. His frantic and lubberly
‘prentice-work found but a poor market for itself when pitted against
an arm which had been trained by the first masters of Europe in
single-stick, quarter-staff, and every art and trick of swordsmanship.
The little King stood, alert but at graceful ease, and caught and
turned aside the thick rain of blows with a facility and precision which
set the motley on-lookers wild with admiration; and every now and then,
when his practised eye detected an opening, and a lightning-swift rap
upon Hugo’s head followed as a result, the storm of cheers and laughter
that swept the place was something wonderful to hear. At the end of
fifteen minutes, Hugo, all battered, bruised, and the target for
a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk from the field; and the
unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne aloft upon the
shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honour beside the
Ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the Game-Cocks;
his meaner title being at the same time solemnly cancelled and annulled,
and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against any who
should thenceforth utter it.
All attempts to make the King serviceable to the troop had failed. He
had stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape.
He had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his
return; he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the
housemates. He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work;
he would not work; moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own
soldering-iron; and finally both Hugo and the tinker found their
hands full with the mere matter of keeping his from getting away. He
delivered the thunders of his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered
his liberties or tried to force him to service. He was sent out, in
Hugo’s charge, in company with a slatternly woman and a diseased baby,
to beg; but the result was not encouraging--he declined to plead for the
mendicants, or be a party to their cause in any way.
Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and
the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became
gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at
last to feel that his release from the hermit’s knife must prove only a
temporary respite from death, at best.
But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was
on his throne, and master again. This, of course, intensified the
sufferings of the awakening--so the mortifications of each succeeding
morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the
combat with Hugo, grew bitterer and bitterer, and harder and harder to
bear.
The morning after that combat, Hugo got up with a heart filled with
vengeful purposes against the King. He had two plans, in particular.
One was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit
and ‘imagined’ royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to
accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the
King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law.
In pursuance of the first plan, he purposed to put a ‘clime’ upon the
King’s leg; rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and
perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get
Canty’s help, and _force_ the King to expose his leg in the highway
and beg for alms. ‘Clime’ was the cant term for a sore, artificially
created. To make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of
unslaked lime, soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a
piece of leather, which was then bound tightly upon the leg. This would
presently fret off the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking;
blood was then rubbed upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a
dark and repulsive colour. Then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in
a cleverly careless way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen,
and move the compassion of the passer-by. {8}
Hugo got the help of the tinker whom the King had cowed with the
soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon
as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker
held him while Hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg.
The King raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the
sceptre was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him
and enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats. This
continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work
would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption. But there
was; for about this time the ‘slave’ who had made the speech denouncing
England’s laws, appeared on the scene, and put an end to the enterprise,
and stripped off the poultice and bandage.
The King wanted to borrow his deliverer’s cudgel and warm the jackets
of the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring
trouble--leave the matter till night; the whole tribe being together,
then, the outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt. He
marched the party back to camp and reported the affair to the Ruffler,
who listened, pondered, and then decided that the King should not be
again detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something
higher and better--wherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the
mendicant rank and appointed him to steal!
Hugo was overjoyed. He had already tried to make the King steal, and
failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort, now, for of
course the King would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered
directly from head-quarters. So he planned a raid for that very
afternoon, purposing to get the King in the law’s grip in the course of
it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem
to be accidental and unintentional; for the King of the Game-Cocks was
popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular
member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him
over to the common enemy, the law.
Very well. All in good time Hugo strolled off to a neighbouring village
with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after
another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil
purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and