The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain [fantasy novels to read .TXT] 📗

swift

footsteps, retreating. Immediately came a succession of thundering

knocks upon the cabin door, followed by—

 

“Hullo-o-o! Open! And despatch, in the name of all the devils!”

 

Oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the King’s

ears; for it was Miles Hendon’s voice!

 

The hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the

bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the King heard a

talk, to this effect, proceeding from the ‘chapel’:—

 

“Homage and greeting, reverend sir! Where is the boy—MY boy?”

 

“What boy, friend?”

 

“What boy! Lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions!—I am not

in the humour for it. Near to this place I caught the scoundrels who I

judged did steal him from me, and I made them confess; they said he was

at large again, and they had tracked him to your door. They showed me

his very footprints. Now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an’

thou produce him not—Where is the boy?”

 

“O good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried

here the night. If such as you take an interest in such as he, know,

then, that I have sent him of an errand. He will be back anon.”

 

“How soon? How soon? Come, waste not the time—cannot I overtake him?

How soon will he be back?”

 

“Thou need’st not stir; he will return quickly.”

 

“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